Thorzul Will Rule: January 2009

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Where's Kent Tekulve?

Meet Kent Tekulve, straight-up baller and now officially the greatest piece of collectable baseball memorabilia in the history of mankind, ever, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, world without end, mentally awake, and morally straight. This cannot be topped.

Kent, however, likes to hide. I suppose he has something against wine glasses. Just don't mess with that Fiestaware, Kent!

Can you spot him in the pantry, eagle eye?

Oh, that Kent Tekulve, always the trickster...

This is just a picture of the fireplace...or is it?

How on earth did he get into the linens closet?

You thought you could hide behind the Criterion DVDs, and you thought wrong.

Some information about the Kent Tekulve statue: He has a whopping zero points of articulation, a rarity in today's action figure landscape where a failure to bend at each knuckle in tantamount to...I don't know...crappiness. I you get a chance, check out the greatest blog post on any subject in the history of man at X-E.com, Spider Man's review of an entire box of 96 crayons.

Friday, January 30, 2009

CC: Update 1/30/09

After the last CC post, I soon realized that including all of the card images made it a little lengthy, so from now on I'll just scan the new card and then include the complete card list below.

2008 Topps Updates & Highlights #UH300 Gold Foil

(A photograph works much better, I've learned, to show the gold on these cards.)

2008 Topps Updates & Highlights #UH300
2008 Topps Updates & Highlights #UH300 Gold (0313/2008)
2008 Topps Updates & Highlights #UH300 Black (56/57)
2008 Upper Deck Timeline #39
2008 Upper Deck Timeline #39 Gold
2008 Upper Deck Timeline #162
2008 Upper Deck Timeline #162 Gold Stamp
2008 Upper Deck Timeline #242
2008 UD Documentary #3048 MIL103
2008 UD Documentary #3138 MIL106
2008 UD Documentary #3228 MIL109
2008 UD Documentary #3318 MIL112
2008 UD Documentary #3948 MIL133
2008 UD Documentary #4038 MIL136
2008 UD Documentary #4128 MIL139
2008 UD Documentary #4218 MIL142
2008 UD Documentary #4308 MIL145
2008 UD Documentary #4398 MIL148
2008 UD Documentary #4488 MIL151
2008 UD Documentary #4578 MIL154
2008 UD Documentary #4668 MIL157
2008 UD Documentary #4758 MIL160
2008 UD Documentary #4848
2008 UD Documentary #4398 MIL148 Gold
2008 Topps Stadium Club #10
2008 Upper Deck Sweet Spot #18

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Wrong Laundry

Approximately one thousand years ago, dayf was handing out holiday care packages to the bums and winos who traipsed across his snowless front lawn. All you had to do was stick your hand out, ask for something, and he'd give it to you. (Now we know how it must feel to work for UPAF. Zing!)

Anyways, I wanted to challenge dayf with something more than "Gimme all your Brewers!" or "Red Sox, please." I thought it might be fun if I sent him on a hunt for cards satisfying the following criteria: guys pictured in a team uniform other than the one they were best known for playing in. These came months ago, but today you finally get to see them. This is what he sent, according to the team we all know and love them for.

Mets...

Cubs...

White Sox...

Padres...

Blue Jays (among others, though probably best known during his Toronto coming-of-age years)...

Tigers...

Indians...

Dodgers...

Pirates...

Yankees...

Red Sox (though Schilling could also fit in with Phillies)...

A surprisingly large amount of Royals (surprising since the Royals have now become MLB's forgotten team)...

Giants...

And, of course, Braves...

I'll close with my personal favorites here. We've got an early photo of Nolan Ryan, who could easily be thought of best as an Angel, an Astro, or a Ranger...

...and Yogi Berra. I did not know this before receiving this card, but Berra was a player/coach for the Mets in 1965, playing in only four games. I truly love learning new things, so thanks, dayf. I look forward to sending you on another scavenger hunt next year.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Topps Sterling: The Chronicle of a Frugal Gentleman

What can you say about 2008 Topps Sterling? My first reaction was that I wanted no part of it. What part of "I won't pay $240 for a pack of cards" doesn't Topps understand? But then I got a look at the checklist and noticed that Robin Yount was going to be included. Still, I had no desire to empty the contents of my wallet (along with those belonging to about ten other people) for the mere chance that I might get my hero in this player-specific box. This qualifies as a problem.

Solution: Guys with more money than sense open up cases of this stuff, keep the packs from players who lived during or prior to the Great Depression, then try to salvage some of the overhead by selling unopened boxes where the player has been revealed. Thusly, for about a third of the price I would have paid for a "blind" box, I got one of the guy I wanted. God bless an open market economy!

Here's the box I received, nearly identical to one that would have cost at least three times as much, the only difference being the absence of both the shrink wrap and the "Mystery Pack" the cover hints at. Not a huge loss.

Open the cover to find lots of unnecessary matting and packaging. We can now clearly see that this is a Robin Yount box. To think...someone was disappointed by this and threw it to the floor like those women hired by Veruca Salt's father to open all those candy bars. Yes, this is my Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight.

With the second layer of shrink wrap removed, we get a look at the fancy white box. Sadly, this sucker has better hinges on it than the back door to my house. What's inside that could merit such craftsmanship. I'd better find the script to the final episode of LOST in there under the Yount cards.

Here's what lurked inside. The base cards for this set are really nice, although I'm a little put off by the choice to make them cream in color. There also exists a parallel set numbered to 50 in white. The white ones make the cream look like ass.
008 Topps Sterling #217 (RY1) (172/250)
2008 Topps Sterling #224 (RY8) (024/250), 2008 Topps Sterling #226 (RY10)(176/250), 2008 Topps Sterling #221 White (43/50)

At last, we get to the monstah Topps promised me. It's not a 1/1, but I certainly could have done a lot worse.
2008 Topps Sterling AUTO (2x Stripe, Bat, Blue) #4SSA-139 (RY30) (03/10)

The card pays homage to his 1982 All-Star appearance. I'm pretty sure Topps did not make a card honoring his 6 stolen bases in 1991, but I wouldn't put it past them. Don't be a dummy, don't pay retail for this.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Funniest Shit I Heard All Day

I am occasionally amazed by the gulf that can exist between my knowledge of a topic and that of my third grade students.
Today we were finishing up a math project where I had the kids constructing their own bar graphs using the Green Bay Packers' 2008 scores as the data. (Yeah, yeah, I know, a lot of short bars.)
This afternoon's work time gave me a chance to talk a little football with the kids. One boy claimed his favorite team was the Cowboys. Following this proclamation, the kid sitting next to him spouted off one of the most subtly insanely genius comments I have ever heard:

"The only reason the Cowboys always win is 'cause they got Dallas. He a fast runner."

Who can argue with that?

(Editor's Note: The 1989 Panini Sticker above was produced completely in-camera, with no hidden wires, CGI, or green screen technology.)