The Tide is High(ly Subjective and Completely Arbritrary)

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Note from Highly Subjective and Completely and Complete Arbitrary

One part of the fantastic current wave of hobby blog giveaways are the great cards offered by Brian at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary (or HSACA for short). Brian did his version of Free Stuff Friday for 20 weeks(!), starting in February of this year and did his last one on June 19th. I picked up the two Topps cards pictured on the right from Brian’s Free Card Friday #1.

2017 Topps Salute #S-37
2017 Topps Salute #S-37
2019 Topps Gold #615
2019 Topps Gold #615
2018 Topps 1983 #83-18
2018 Topps 1983 #83-18

While surfing through Brians’s want lists, I saw that he had listed a few 1969 Topps baseball needs. I don’t really have much that other people need but I did happen to have a near mint duplicate of a ’69 Topps Rico Carty (Braves). You can see the card on Brian’s “Free Trade Agreements” post. I think Brian was pretty happy to get this card because he sent me four extra cards from my want list. Included were these two 2018 Topps inserts (Nolan Ryan and José Altuve).

2018 Topps Salute #TS-7
2018 Topps Salute #TS-7
2018 Topps Heritage #422 (short print)
2018 Topps Heritage #422 (short print)
2018 Topps Heritage #479 (short print)
2018 Topps Heritage #479 (short print)

Also included were these two 2018 Topps Heritage short prints. I’m happy to report that these two Heritage cards helped me complete the White Sox and Reds portions of my 2018 Heritage base set. After updating my want list, I see that I’m getting really close to completing this set–not an easy task considering that this set (including Heritage High Numbers) has 125 short print cards.

The terrific-looking cards pictured on the right were chosen from Brian’s Free Stuff Friday #15 back in the middle of May. As recently as 2018, I did not care much for parallels. I really don’t have the time to collect endless sets of parallels. (I’m only making an exception for the 1992 Topps Gold Winners and 1993 Topps Gold sets.)

Like many Topps flagship baseball card collectors, I have a number of various gold, black, emerald, cognac, and diamond parallels from past flagship sets. I never really knew what to do with these but I didn’t want to trade them either.

So now that I’m slowly getting my cards inventoried and putting them in binders, I finally figured out how to fit parallels into my collection. I’ve always organized my cards in boxes by teams–not numerical order. The cards in my binders will be organized by teams also. The thing I don’t like is that the last card of one team may end up right next to the first card of the next team. I prefer that the next team start on the next page. So I use the parallels to fill in the spaces. Thus, the Jesus Montero Emerald Foil card will go next to his regular base card.

To me, the great thing about adding various parallels to the binders is that in most cases they have the same number as the base card and add variety to a nine-pocket page. So now parallels have a purpose in my set binders and I don’t need to collect an entire parallel set. So any given binder of mine can show golds, camo, Independence Day and other parallels right next to its corresponding base card. I could even end up with a rainbow of a player in some set binders.

2012 Topps Golden Moments #GM-6, 2013 Topps Emerald Foil #459, 2019 Topps Rainbow Foil #307
2012 Topps Golden Moments #GM-6, 2013 Topps Emerald Foil #459, 2019 Topps Rainbow Foil #307

So Brian’s Free Stuff Friday #16 post appeared on May 22nd and I chose the cards pictured on the right. The cards arrived the following Thursday. The next day, Brian posted Free Stuff Friday #17 and mentioned that his local post office “is out of commission, and may or may not have had fire damage in the wake of demonstrations…”. Well that’s certainly something to be concerned about.

1982 Fleer #631
1982 Fleer #631
2015 Topps Rainbow Foil #260
2015 Topps Rainbow Foil #260

Then the next day I saw a picture on Facebook of a burned out brick building. It was Brian’s post office. The building’s signage even had the same zip code as Brian’s return address on the PWE Brian had sent. That was a bit jarring.

But that didn’t stop Brian from posting his weekly Free Stuff Friday posts. Brian kept sailing ahead and in Free Stuff Friday #20, I picked up these three cards. All three are very nice cards but the Bob Gibson card is the one that really caught my attention. That’s because a couple of months ago, I picked up 11 other assorted Mound Dominance cards along with a few hundred other cards from baseballcardstore.ca. Mound Dominance is a 15-card insert set and I think it may now be near-complete. However, it will probably be some time before I can dig up the one I already have to know which ones I still need.

And so we honor Brian with a hearty Stadium Fantasium standing ovation for his generosity.

1996 Topps #205, 2012 Topps Mound Marvels #MD-6, 2018 Topps Salute Series 2 #S-77
1996 Topps #205, 2012 Topps Mound Marvels #MD-6, 2018 Topps Salute Series 2 #S-77

So do you aggressively pursue short printed and or parallel cards?

Stay tuned…

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Author: BBCARDZ

1 thought on “The Tide is High(ly Subjective and Completely Arbritrary)”

  1. Any post with a Blondie reference in the title and a video gets a click.

    I do not aggressively pursue short-prints or parallels. I do aggressively pursue Kellogg’s cards from the ’70s.

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