In the greatest Ted talk of all time, Erin McKean said "the Internet is actually made up of words and enthusiasm."
To this I would add "and pictures!" but I think she pretty much nailed it. Despite blogs dying every three months or so since 2002, I still read a few hundred of them (using Google Reader, and now also stellar), and I try to follow enthusiastic bloggers regardless of their expertise. Dayf, the Cardboard Junkie, is one such blogger (and conveniently I also love baseball cards). I was taken with his comparison of Topps' 2012 "Heritage" Card set, inspired by the 1963 Topps set, and the actual 1963 Topps Card set. Compare the uncut sheets from 2012 (on the left) and 1963 (on the right):
I know this entire post makes me look like the baseball card version of Jack Nicholson washing his hands 47 times an hour in As Good As It Gets, but it's just bad process. Aligning the page in the '63 style would have cost absolutely nothing extra and could have saved a whole lot of potential quality issues with the product. And it didn't even take a genius to figure it out, it would just take someone who was actually familiar with the history of the original set to copy the idea. If the new photo is actually how the uncut sheets are aligned, then I'll be very interested to see some of the inevitable Heritage ripping posts upcoming in the card blogging community for any weirdly cut cards with little slivers of color where they shouldn't be.
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I just think that in a Heritage product celebrating the days of yore, it might be helpful to actually understand how it was done in the olden days when designing the product… Then again, just because your ship is unsinkable, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea to not bring enough lifeboats on your maiden journey. If you're gonna create a retro-styled set celebrating your Heritage, at least have one freaking person on the design staff, paid or unpaid who actually knows the history of the product and can use that knowledge to improve the new release.
I agree! But the problem is that Topps is actually the only company currently licensed to make cards, so we end up with a lot of (to borrow NBC's headline) "crappy baseball cards." I recommend Gary Cieradkowski's Infinite Baseball Card Set. Since he only produces cards of players from the past, or from fiction, there's no licensing involved. His work captures, better than Topps ever will, the spirit — not to mention the enthusiasm and heritage — of baseball cards. And blogging.
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