Today is one of my favorite Mondays of the year:  the final regular Monday of the fall semester!  After this week of teaching is done, all I'll need to do is give three sets of final exams and then I'll be done for the semester!  Another reason why this Monday is so good is that I have a couple of nice TCDB trades to show off.  Let's get right to it, shall we? We'll begin with a swap with user WikkiWikkiWikki: Yep, I'm still plugging away at a whole lot of 2024 Allen & Ginter min insert sets.  This particular swap netted me two more of the retail-only Rookie D ..read more

Barry Larkin Year:  2022 Brand:  Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary Parallel set:  Refractor Card number:  74 I'm nearing the end of the various parallels that I own out of the 2022 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary set.  Today, we have the rather basic Refractor parallel to take a quick look at.  Absolutely nothing special here, no serial numbering, no crazy foil effects, no bright colors.  Instead, you simply get a classy, shiny card - and it does look quite nice with the Refractor finish!  This card is proof that you don't have t ..read more

Happy (almost) December and with the end of the year fast approaching, it is now time to vote for your favorite baseball card sets and bloggers for 2024! This is now the 4th year in a row of me hosting the End-of-Year Awards and I'm hoping this year is the biggest yet in terms of voter turnout.  The goal of the voting is for everyone to have fun and to spread some positivity at the end of the year (thus all of the categories are "best of" or otherwise positive in nature).  To vote, follow this link to the Google form. Categories for this year include: For baseball cards: Be ..read more

Welcome to my Top 50 Board Games of 2024!   Last year, I compiled my first ever Top 50 Board Game list and had a lot of fun in the process.  It was so much fun, in fact, that I've decided to do it again this year!  Now that I have one year of list-making under my belt, I've tweaked my ranking process a bit to keep things as up-to-date as possible.  Here are the new rules that I followed: I took all the games that I played from November 2023 through November 2024 plus all of the games on last year's Top 50 list.  I then fed that large list into Pub Meeple's ranking ..read more

Today, it's time to dive into the fifth box out of my case of 2024 Allen & Ginter.  For the first time in the case, I pulled a box topper that wasn't a standard baseball player topper.  Instead, I got a giant corn dog card! Those who hate Allen & Ginter will rightfully point at a card like this and say "See, who wants that crap?" while those of us who love Ginter will celebrate finding a deep-fried hot dog in our box.  I think this is one of those cases where both sides are correct, given their own views and experiences!  As for me, mark me down in the "happ ..read more

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!   I've been messing around lately with some AI art generators that I'm trying to use to help build a deck of cards for a game I use in my Calculus classes.  I decided to use the same art generator to quickly make a Thanksgiving "logo" for the blog and I'd say the results turned out better than expected! I have to give thanks to the computer overlords for having such (free) resources for teachers to use, I know my game cards look much better with the AI art included on them!   I also need to give thanks to all of you, that is, my loy ..read more

One of the things that I've learned while collecting baseball cards is that if you decide to collect insert sets and you don't complete the set within the first 24 months of its release, you'll probably have a hard time building the set!   Case in point:  The 2009 Allen & Ginter set had a short printed mini set called Inventions of the Future.  The set only had five cards but it took me from 2009 all the way until this past week to finally complete my full set: That's right, I finally tracked down the extremely elusive Mental Movies card from the set and it only too ..read more

Yesterday, I posted my usual TCDB trade recap for the previous week.  However, I ended up receiving a dozen trade envelopes last week which was simply too many for a single post.  Thus, I showed off half of the packages on Monday and now, a day later, I'm back today to show off the remaining goodies! We'll start with a package from pucklord333: Two A&G minis from this year's set including a card of BBQ Brisket which instantly makes me hungry.  I do love a good brisket sandwich!  I also have an unexplained love of cards showing flags - so the Flags of the World set i ..read more

Happy Monday, everyone.  At least this is a short work week for many of us!  With that in mind, there's no time to waste, let's dig right into my overflowing mailbag from last week's TCDB trades. We'll begin with a trade with user BristolBob: I have to admit, I kind of love these "scratch and sniff" cards called Got the Itch from this year's Ginter set.  Sure, the idea is juvenile but hey, card collecting is juvenile at its core so who am I to hold that against the concept?  I will also admit to immediately rubbing the card and seeing if I could smell the BBQ.  Fin ..read more

Today, I wanted to quickly show off a recent eBay purchase that I made where I was able to acquire a smattering of mini inserts from the 2024 Allen & Ginter set: Some of the above minis I also ended up (accidentally) trading for, but at least a few of them are actual needs for my set build!  In particular, the two Ballpark Bites I know I still needed.  It's also worth a quick decision as to which is better at a baseball game:  the classic hot dog or the slightly more upscale Polish sausage?  Obviously, I'm more of a nachos kind of guy but if I had to choose between ..read more