T206

With but four cards remaining for me to get in the 2010 Topps series 1 set, and my feelings toward both Heritage and UD series, er, only, running between blech and blah, there is just not much to rip in this town these days, set builder wise, unless I wanted to chase 1997 Donruss or something.

So the next best thing is T206. Because I need to be building four sets at a time, really, since Democratic Roadkill helped me with my final 2007 missing Masterpieces.

Overall, the 206 aren't bad. I guess Hunter Pence doesn't think so, but that is understandable, considering this abortion of a baseball card. Really, what the hell are you thinking Topps? Is the guy a douche? Did the photographer fill all his cards? Why does this card exist?

It is a mystery to Andrew Miller, too.

There are something like 15 Mantles in this set; regular card, regular card sp, at least 3 mini variations, and 7 checklist cards, and who knows how many others. This is the regular, plain old card #154.

The set is also chock full of Hall of Famers, too.The pictures tend to be cooler on the players from years gone by, because the photos are actually kind of crappy quality, because the film was kind of crappy quality, plus it is really, really old. Now, photographers take a digital picture on a really nice camera, and then abuse it in Photoshop to make it *look* old, but mostly, it just looks like it was run through a bunch of Photoshop filters. Some pictures look better than others, but generally the set looks ok.
Evidently, teams played at county fairgrounds back in the day, which was quite possible. I love Hank's heroic swing to win the game at sundown.

Oddly, the short prints are less awesome than the regular cards, except for that whole short print hard-to-find thing. The backs just say "rookie" in the case of McCutchen, or whatever the player's last name is, in the case of every non-rookie with a parallel. The regular cards give you an interesting nugget of information about the player, which is cool.

But they are easier to find than the short prints in regular Topps. In more than 100 packs of that, I have pulled 1 damn short print, while in 4 blasters of T206 I have a half dozen. I like that. Short prints, but not impossible.

The minis are pretty cool, I like them better than the regular size cards. Here are three variations to the backs. I like the variations, it is a nice little surprise in the packs. But I don't like them enough to collect each variation as set. Piedmont is the default, Polar Bear the next most common, and Old Mill is found 1 in 20 packs. Even less common are Cycle, numbered to 99, and Carolina Brights, of which only one exists in the whole wide world.

I will say one thing, the cards are colorful. And while I am not a super big fan of the abuse of Photoshop filters, this set isn't bad. I do think Topps owes Hunter Pence an apology though.