Torren' Up Cards

 Hello, it's been a while since my last post.

In the time since there've been some changes I decided to make to my personal life, leading to this hiatus.

For one thing I left my previous job.

Last year I blogged about how I felt burnt out, this year something similar happened and that's when I kinda figured, "yeah no, I'm out". Glad to have the experience under my belt, but I'd like to do other things than try to stick around and inevitably feel it a third time.

Second, I moved back to Japan.

My life until this point has been very weird, I've spent more time in the states, but I spent my entire high school/adolescent years in Japan which to me basically means that I was born in NYC but raised in Japan. Like everyone with my background I did have to eventually pick where I wanted to be, I went with Japan.

This is what the extreme downsizing I've been doing the last few years was gearing up for. To my surprise I actually did manage to bring the amount of stuff I moved out here down to a reasonable amount. Once again big thanks to folks like The Lost Collector, Night Owl Cards, nick, NPB Card Guy, Dime Box Nick and Gavin for their "contribution" to this effort.

A third big change that's also happened is that I just kinda stopped collecting sports cards. My interests shifted elsewhere, mostly to Yu-Gi-Oh!

In the time since I've moved back to Japan I've only gotten two baseball cards for myself and have actively continued to downsize since among the stuff that came with me here, a few cards were designated to be distributed to folks in Japan.

The Shinnosuke Ogasawara autograph above replaces an older one I had which had a shitty picture. This one isn't much to look at either given how much real estate is devoted to the autograph but it sure beats just having some generic profile picture looking shot where Ogasawara looks pissed off.

The second autograph was of Shinya Matsuyama which I got for a specific reason.

My old collecting friend Anco89 got me a signed Shikishi (a Japanese autograph board) with a signature made out to me by Matsuyama. This is extremely cool and will definitely be kept. Also pairing it with an official certified autograph felt right.

But overall it's just been very easy to not think about sports. Maybe wrapping up work and moving around kept me preoccupied too but outside of the week where the World Series was happening nothing really had me interested in sports and even less about accumulating those pieces of cardboard.

Who knows though, I might get the itch again. Maybe not to get stuff for myself but more accurately to send PWE's across an entire ocean.

As for this blog it's not formally ending, but I also can't commit to posting as often as before. Not when my interest in sports cards is this low. I'll just let the ideas come to me naturally.

In some ways I suppose it's very fitting that all of this happens in the same year after I decide to part with what I was preoccupied with for the better part of the last decade. It's a new chapter for me personally. The fear, the anxiety, the dread, all of that is there, but so too are feelings of excitement, hopefulness and optimism. I know I'm in for good and bad times ahead just like if I were to be anywhere else, bring them both on. I'm ready.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

これからもよろしくお願いします！

 As documented on this blog, I didn't grow up collecting sports cards. I had some here and there but it wasn't an active hobby until much later on in my teens.

Today I just wanted to share the actual cards I've had since childhood that slowly (very slowly) have been built upon over the years.

Yup, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

These can be organized into about four different time periods of my life where I've been on and off of it.

1. 2002-2004

While I was clearing stuff out from my childhood home a few years ago I came across a plastic bag and inside were a select few cards I owned from the days when I was still in elementary school.

Chief among them was this Dark Magician. Originally it came in a starter deck from when Yu-Gi-Oh! first came to North America. But as a kid I thought the original card art for DM sucked so I put a sticker of DM from the anime over it. This is easily the most "well loved" card in my possession. The cut corners, the piece of tape I put on it, it's all there baby.

I had a handful of Japanese cards too. The more scuffed the card is, the more I must've liked it. After all, Magical Cylinders played a big role in the anime and this card is shiny! Or was.

At the time Yu-Gi-Oh! was becoming a phenomenon that was being played at playgrounds across the US and classrooms all across Japan. Despite that, the number of friends I had who actually played the game was basically zero.

We all had the cards and watched the Duel Monsters anime, but what we didn't have was reading comprehension. The way the cards work can be very confusing and the fact that real rules for the game are nothing like how it was played in the anime didn't help. It ultimately it came down to who could shout the loudest before the closest parent or teacher in our vicinity stepped in to tell us to stop playing this game and do something else.

Just like that though, I did stop. After the Battle City arc in the anime, I lost interest in the franchise and tuned out for a while.

2. 2006

This wasn't really a revival but I did happen to catch the second anime series Yu-Gi-Oh! GX on Cartoon Network a few times and thought it was pretty neat to watch.

I didn't pick up any cards around this time period because by then all of my friends had moved on from the franchise. But in the years since I did pick up a few cards I liked from the show. Learning that the best HERO strategy is to use absolutely none of the monsters shown in the show was a heartbreaker though.

3. 2008-2009

By 2008 I had moved to Japan and over there Yu-Gi-Oh! was hot in the streets. Around this time we were in the 3rd anime series Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's and more importantly during the midst of when the game transformed overnight.

It was thanks to the introduction of synchro summoning that the game had a new mechanic which fleshed it out even further. This is where in-game strategies shifted in a huge way and started to turn into the combo fest it's since become.

During that wave I pulled two "relief" parallels, which is usually one of the more sought after parallels given to the rarer cards in the Japanese sets. These two weren't worth anything then and they're worth even less now but it sure did feel cool to say I was able to pull them out of random packs I bought on a whim at 7-Eleven.

But despite that, I just still couldn't get into the card game because it still required me to read and interpret how cards worked. By 2010 my interests shifted to LEGO and then to baseball cards.

4. 2017-2019

Alright, third time's the charm right? This is when I'll finally learn how to play the game right?

Well kinda. Around 2016 is when the app Duel Links launched, and in its early infancy it was a nice way to get re-introduced to a sort've abbreviated version of Yu-Gi-Oh! It helped ease me through the core gameplay and more importantly didn't require me to memorize every effect in play since the game did it automatically.

My first blogposts about Yu-Gi-Oh! were from around that time period too.

But the game Duel Links started getting complicated and my friends who also played the game started leaving (the game being a gacha/grindfest doesn't help). I also deleted it when my phone just needed the space for other things.

But hey, at least I'd been able to obtain some level of understanding for how the game works.

5. 2022-today

In late 2022 I got a new phone, and more memory space. With that I downloaded Duel Links again and as somewhat expected the game evolved because it had introduced the new mechanics the actual card game had been implementing since I stopped paying attention in 2009.

XYZ Summoning, Pendulum Summoning, Link Summoning, Rush Duels, welcome to Master Rule Five!

The XYZ and Pendulum eras of the franchise were ultimately what I feel I truly missed but at the same time it didn't appear like I missed out on much.

Now I've got a firmer grasp on the game, how to play it, and most important of all what I want to play. Turns out the best way to get better at playing a children's card game is to not be a child.

After all this time I've finally assembled an actual deck proper that isn't just a pile of random stuff combined from booster packs and starter decks. It's not the best, nor is it competitive, but I like it.

I'm not sure if I can describe it as "fun" because Yu-Gi-Oh! is not supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be a cruel ritual by which the vengeful undead spirit of a pharaoh judges whether you deserve to just die, or die and then have your soul banished to hell. But at least I know what it can do.

Anyway as I was sorting, sleeving and paging these cards together, it just struck me that this is the rare franchise/collectible where I'd picked it up and then put it back down more than any other hobby. Every time my appreciation for it grew just a little bit. Will I eventually get bored again and then move on? Probably. But if my life to now has shown me anything, it's that I'll find my way back to it again eventually.

The heart of the cards compels me I guess.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

 A few years ago I blogged about Bryce Harper and mentioned how I might want to go back and pick up cards of his from 2011 and 2012. Those were my earliest years in the hobby and the then-super prospect's cards from around that time are still pretty cool to me.

So much so that I stopped by American Legends and purchased Bryce Harper's rookie card from 2012 Bowman Chrome for $25. No hesitation, no pondering if buying online would've been cheaper. I just knew that I still needed it for my "early Harper run" collection and I scooped it up.

I suppose I should specify that by 2012 Bowman Chrome I mean the second Bowman offering that usually comes out in the summer months. After Bowman and before Bowman Draft. At the time those cards came 4 per hobby pack, which meant the odds of finding and pulling one of these was significantly less compared to the other two Bowman offerings. Which is how I went over a decade without ever getting it.

So one of the big pieces I needed was finally mine, which meant it was really time to go back and see what I needed to fill the holes. Another $43 out the window and, well...

Yup, the vaunted 2012 Topps Chrome rookie card.

These were hard to pull for basically the same reason as the Bowman Chrome rookie. There've been times where this card was probably cheaper but screw it, sometimes you just gotta.

With this I've been able to fill the two biggest gaps in my early Harper collection that I've wanted to fill for a decade. The thought of non-parallel base cards that cost more than $3 (be they rookie cards or not) is what kept me away for a while but this feeling of the mainline Chromes finally coming together is very satisfying.

Also this isn't supposed to be all encompassing. The only criteria that matters is whether or not I wanted it between January to October of 2012. Which is why I can ignore a lot of stuff that is from around then but would cost a lot relative to how much I'd really want it.

With that there's now really only really one holy grail Harper card left on my radar. Willing to play the waiting game for that one, I waited 12 years to get these. Another decade or two won't change anything, although I hope the price at least drops.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

 So while I've discussed how I've parted with my TTM, IP and Luis Torrens collections, one more collection I've also had going that I pulled the plug on and finally moved on from was my New York Yankees Prospect Autograph collection.

This collection was a nebulous one that encompassed any and all Yankees prospects since 2000 to around 2022 when I stopped. I can't say it had any real focus other than to see if I could ever recreate the MLB Pipeline Top Prospects lists.

All you have to do is thumb through like 20 of these "oh I remember him!" guys who never amounted to much before realizing that card companies pump out way too many autographs of future busts.

This feels even worse when you realize that from 2013-17 the Yankees were extremely focused on player development following the end of the Core 4 Era and despite how they assembled what was at one point one of the best farmsystems in baseball, their results from that period just ended up mirroring that of the 2000's. One big time Hall of Fame caliber success in Aaron Judge/Robinson Cano, a solid All Star like Gleyber Torres/Brett Gardner, a small army of very good faceless/nameless relievers, another "so much for that" catcher in Gary Sanchez/Jesus Montero, and not a ton else due to various circumstances. At least in 2009 they won a ring though.

Overall I'd say the 2010's fared a lot better for the Yankees' development program and the jury is still out on the last wave of guys like the Volpes-Dominguezes-Jones who can still potentially change how the 2010's prospects are viewed but, yeesh it still doesn't change how we all collectively wasted too much time thinking about Chance Adams and Manny Banuelos.

So then what does one do when they've accumulated this much wasted certified ink?

Well in my case I just sent them off to The Lost Collector. TLC the blogger is no longer active but TLC the collector is fortunately still very active. Especially on TCDb. 

I've been sending TLC stuff at random for so long that he more-or-less knows the deal. He's free to thumb through whatever I send and keep whatever he wants, and if the rest can help him get other things he does want, that works out the absolute best. This is also basically the core of my Zapping philosophy, just dump folks a bunch of stuff at once with what I know/hope is a mix of good stuff and worthless stuff.

To be clear as much as I joke about "dumping grounds" I do really appreciate having people like TLC and Gavin and so many others for this. Because I'm someone who gets bored quickly and wants to move stuff I don't want anymore even quicker. The best way to do that is to move it all as one giant lot. No hassle, no thinking, no liquids/perishables/fragile items/lithium batteries.

Because think of the alternative. I'd have to put these up on eBay or send them to COMC or list them on TCDb or routinely keep track of what cards are available, just typing all that out felt time consuming. I don't want to imagine having to actually do it too. No offense to people who do do those things, but that's not how I want to spend my allocated hobby time or energy.

Especially because when money is involved, I think expectations are set unreasonably higher. Like for me as a consumer when I go on eBay and pay for shipping (especially now that it's like $5!) my expectation is to immediately receive a tracking number within an hour after the payment clears and if the card isn't physically shipped out within two days I get annoyed. If the seller had it as free shipping, I don't care nearly as much. In the event that the mail carriers simply didn't just scan properly I DM the seller and at least expect a confirmation from them that at least the card was sent out. In any scenario, if their response is either ghosting me or even slightly irks me then I don't leave feedback regardless of when the card actually does arrive. Not positive, not negative, not neutral, just none.

Probably a passive aggressive dick move that's just because I'm impatient but whatever, when money comes into it it's a whole other realm. A while ago I bought a card where a seller charged me $5 for shipping but only spent $1.59 to ship it, no tracking either. If I were in a bad mood I would've left neutral feedback but instead I just blocked them and didn't leave any feedback.

If I go on the selling side I have to then apply the same unreasonably high standards I have for vendors like these to myself, and there's no limit to how petty and unreasonable people can be for other reasons. So no I don't want to go through that shit for no-names and never-weres like Jairo Heredia. I will also not use this to consider that my standards for sellers who charge for shipping are too high and re-adjust them.

So the best way for me is to just never sell and unload onto others. Once the card is bought it's all a sunk cost to me anyway so any money that could've been recouped be damned.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

 Pulling the plug on the TTM/IP collection did not necessarily mean that I won't still continue partaking in these hobbies in some form in 2024 and beyond. Old habits die hard. It just means my focus will be narrowed down, er, even more narrower than before.

Like this return from Vinny Castilla, which was the first (and to date last) request I sent out in 2024.

Castilla is one of those names people who grew up with baseball in the 1990's and 2000's remember. He was a staple of those early Colorado Rockies teams, or at least it feels like it in hindsight. Castilla enjoyed a 16 year long career as a major leaguer and he was a two time All Star and one of Mexico's best and brightest stars to date.

I picked up this Bazooka blast bat relic around the same time as when I picked up the Todd Helton Bazooka bat relic. I immediately then sent this off as a TTM request using PastPros after paying his fee.

A month or so later it returned and it helped me reach the 1,500 TTMs mark.

At least per my back-of-the-napkin-math count. When I took stock of the stuff I got that was dismantled and sent off, I was at 1,499.

I suppose that those are rookie numbers compared to people who can afford to send requests to every minor leaguer ever every summer but I'm still surprised I reached 1,000 in hindsight.

Going forward I might get some more here and there as a few forgotten requests from years ago trickle in, or I dabble more with non-sports. But we'll see what happens with the sports stuff I guess. The whole reason I dumped a bunch of base cards onto Nick was so I wouldn't be tempted to send requests anymore.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

2024 TTM Count: 1

Sources:
*https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/castivi02.shtml

 Instead of a want list I have switched to a bucket list. They're cards that I'd like to own at some point in my life. I'm not quite sure if I'd want to keep them for a long time afterwards but they're cool enough cards that yes I would like to have them.

One card I didn't put on there but I never thought I'd ever have the chance to get just fell into my lap.

HELL YES.

That's a Japan-fractor autograph of Kyle Freeland from 2014 Bowman Sterling. It's limited to 5 copies and is a card I never thought I'd see, let alone own.

When I made my initial 14 cards of Freeland post, I made a note that the one parallel I wanted was the Japan-fractor. At the time the only thing available was the non-autographed parallel. A year later I got the autograph! For $10 cheaper too because the hobby is weird like that.

Unfortunately this card being as affordable as it was is more of a indicator on how far Freeland's fallen. In 2018 when he looked like he was finally going to be the first pitcher in history to figure out how to pitch in Coors Field this would've at least gone for triple digits. Unfortunately that time has long since passed and Freeland's gone from future Cy Young contender to ace-by-default on a Colorado Rockies team that is more of a "bonus" perk of the Coors Field experience more than an actual Major League Baseball team at this point. Although good on them for continuing to invest in their own players (congrats to Ezequiel Tovar on his extension). 

Still, when he's on he does show flashes of vintage Freeland, the guy who demonstrated that one of the best ways to pitch in Coors is just pounding the zone with elevated fastballs and getting swings and misses. As evident by how the Rockies' pitching staff is full of arms that can't throw strikes and melts down every other day because of it.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

 So there was a bat blog around originated by Matt who runs the Diamond Jesters blog where you could flex and show off/share the best hits you ever pulled.

I left a comment in the original post laying out the best "hits" from an objective standpoint but they would be as follows.

2011 Bowman Chrome Ryan Pressly Superfractor 1/1 (Note: I found the blogpost by Match-Up where they scanned and shared this super)

2011 Topps Marquee Troy Tulowitzki Red 1/1

2012 Topps Chrome Will Middlebrooks Printing Plate 1/1

2012 Bowman Draft Christian Yelich Futures Game Jumbo Relic /25

2012 Bowman Sterling Yu Darvish Japanese Player Rookie Card Autograph /75

Honorable mentions:

2013 Bowman Draft Aaron Blanton Printing Plate 1/1

2013 Panini Prizm Draft Kris Bryant Gold Autograph /10

2016 BBM Homecoming Hiroki Kuroda patch /30

2011 Topps Update Mike Trout Rookie Card

2011 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects Mike Trout Rookie Card (Chrome)

2011 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects Mike Trout Rookie Card (Paper) x3

Objectively these would be the "best" cards I ever pulled. In terms of rarity and their value on the second hand market.

But subjectively, out of the 11 cards I listed I only have one still in my possession.

As cool as a lot of the stuff I've pulled over the years has been, the fact remains that I never really valued them because they were always just tradebait to get me what I really wanted. In the case of the Trouts, I pulled them in 2011 when he started his MLB career looking like a scrub so those cards weren't really much of anything to me. Even after 2012 I still only saw them as improved tradebait and not anything to actually bother keeping.

So I thought I'd take a different approach and give this topic a little bit more time to marinate and come together. I'll go an alternative route and present what would be the top 5 best cards I ever pulled in the context of how I was thrilled to pull them, and against all odds I still have them now.

You all know how often I turn over my inventory and pull the plug on my collections, do you know how hard it is for a card to stay with me? Well maybe these will hold the answer to how that's possible.

#1 2016 BBM Homecoming Hiroki Kuroda patch /30

This is the only card in the list above (an honorable mention at that) that's still with me. For obvious reasons.

#2 2012 Topps Allen & Ginter Ichiro Suzuki jersey relic

I opened four (4!) hobby boxes of A&G in 2012 and the 11 other hits were all garbage. By a wide margin, the best thing I pulled in the four (4!) hobby boxes was that Ichiro jersey relic. It's not even serially numbered but who cares, pulling a "hit" of Ichiro is always cool. Or at least I convinced myself it was to cope.

#3 2010 Tristar Pursuit Gary Sanchez Autograph /80

In a way this card is ass because if you look closely, you can see that the geniuses at Tristar bungled cutting the autograph sticker. There's fragments of two different signatures on the top and bottom. I'm pretty sure this lack of quality control is why they've since been banished to regional autograph shows and signed memorabilia.

But anyway when I pulled this in 2012, El Gary was one of the New York Yankees' best prospects and I was absolutely thrilled to nab an autograph of his. The shitty sticker sucks, there's still something charming about a serially numbered autograph card of a player you absolutely wanted to have and pulled when you least expected it. It's to the point where I was okay with moving on from my 2010 Bowman Chrome autograph because I had this card. Do you know how strong an attachment has to be to oppose the Chrome is King principle and willingly keep the unlicensed card with badly cut autograph sticker?

She's hot.

#5 TBD

There is no fifth "hit" I've actually kept that I think is worth mentioning. There is a card or two that could round out this spot but I'd rather have something worthy of being catapulted to this list than just having an obvious placeholder that only exists to get jettisoned.

There's also a part of me that wants to leave the fifth spot open just because I am okay with being hopeful it comes along.

I don't open boxes or packs nearly as much as I used to. But I do think I'll probably buy something again when I deem that there's a card in the checklist I really really want. Having a whole case break is something of a bucket list item of mine. Just waiting for a product where I can just be like "yup, that's the one" and go in on.

So big thanks to Matt for the fun little blogging exercise.

And thank you (the readers) for stopping by.

Take care.

 So after all of the movement/downsizings I took a little look at what I still have left.

One thing I've taken note of and had to reflect on after the dust settled was this, I was down to just one superfractor.

One is still better than none mind you, but moving on from the two superfractors in the Luis Torrens collection, giving away the Thairo Estrada rainbow and sending the Austin Kubitza superfractor away to Dime Box Nick reduced my superfractor inventory from five to one in a month. Not good, this is one area where I had to replenish the reserves.

I usually tend to think long and hard about stuff I really "want" but superfractors fall into this "just grab it!" territory. Because there's only one copy of it. Plus unlike other 1/1's like printing plates, this one actually matters. It has cache in the hobby. It's totally stupid that it does, but it does.

And because Kyle Freeland superfractors weren't available and no other Colorado Rockies superfractors that were available were worth thinking about, I decided to opt for this.

Yes, a 1/1 superfractor of Albert Abreu from 2019 Bowman Chrome.

Despite my past as a New York Yankees prospect nut Abreu was never really high on my favorable meter. Mostly because I never saw him in person. He was traded to the Yankees when he was too advanced for then short-season Staten Island. So in that regard I would've gladly gravitated more towards someone like Leonardo Molina.

Abreu's career didn't really go the way fans and the organization alike had hoped. He gave it a good shot but unfortunately most of his time in the majors was spent in relief eating up mop-up garbage time innings.

Still, Abreu was the best option and I sent the seller an offer and they accepted. Great.

Good stuff. Almost as good as...

OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I knew that Topps Chrome NPB had superfractors and whatnot but what I didn't know was that you could find one from an eBay seller based in the United States. The heck?!

Being bored and looking up "Japan superfractor" one night led me to find that Daisuke Sobue superfractor.

1/1 stamp on the back and everything.

Now THIS is a great way to replenish the superfractor reserves. After losing three really really important 1/1's with former PC guys like Torrens and Thairo, getting a Chunichi Dragons superfractor is a great way to fill the void.

Daisuke Sobue is also a great player to have represent the Chunichi Dragons because he was born in Nagoya, Aichi. He graduated from Aichi High School and later Aichi University. He then pitched for the industrial leagues as an employee of Toyota Motors (who have their HQ in Aichi) and later joined the Dragons who play in Nagoya, Aichi.

This is literally one of the most extremest examples of the hometown kid playing for their hometown team. The man's entire life has been in Aichi in an era where everyone has to move to Tokyo because that's the only place where people can find employment. Incredible.

So with this this brings the total superfractors I've owned in my life up to eight, and the three I still have have a corresponding autograph to boot. Not bad.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

 Japan uses the Gregorian calendar but they also use the Chinese Zodiac, and according to that it's the Year of the Dragon in 2024.

I wish I could say this is the year the Chunichi Dragons finally capitalize on the great pitching they have and make it to the playoffs but lmao, no.

So instead I wanted to talk about a few Dragons pick-ups I made in 2023. A big chunk have already been sent to NPB Card Guy, but I actually did keep some. I already showed the Akira Neo (easily the most expensive Dragons auto I've gotten now), accompanying it were the following.