"These Cards Have a Power Over Us" - Overthinking Baseball Cards With Iowa Dave & Contrarian Cards

What's up, Sports cards clubhouse. How you doing? That's Jason. I'm Dave. It's nice to be back with you again. And recently, Jason, a couple of cards have really swept me off my feet. And what I mean by that is there's oftentimes there's these cars that we pursue, but I'm talking about the cards that we don't know that we want until we see them. And it's like. It's like something out of, like, this 90s teen movie right where you're walking, and all of a sudden there's like this girl that you see, and the person, like, walks into a door frame or something like that. Because, like, you. You don't. It's like you didn't even know that you wanted this card. And then all of a sudden, that becomes your obsession. And it doesn't matter if the card costs 50 cents or. Or $50 somehow, some ways, these cards just seem to have a power over us. Almost like cat, like a cast a spell over us. And I've got a couple I want to show, but does this make any sense? Do you know what I'm saying? Yu-Gi-Oh it happens all the time. Unfortunately, it's very expensive, so I know exactly what you're talking about. Well, let me show a couple here, and then we'll kind of get into the idea just a little bit more. But I'm going to at least show the card first. The first One is a 1994 Pinnacle Museum collection of Barry Bonds. And for this one, it was just a couple of things that came together at the same time that just wowed me. And I don't know how I had not seen this car before, but until about six weeks ago, but. Because I love Pinnacle cards, but I just hadn't seen it. It's the image. It's the look on his face. It is the parallel, because there's also. There are other parallels of this card as well. So let me just pull this up so we can take a look at it, because just sort of Yu-Gi-Oh And there it is. Yu-Gi-Oh I bet that that's pretty cool. Yu-Gi-Oh If you're listening to this and you've never seen this car before, it is zoomed in tight on his face, but it's not a portrait shot, just a zoom lens. He has the flip down sunglasses down, and he's sort of gazing up into the sun. He has just flipped it down because he still has one hand down on the corner. So he hasn't quite let go of it. So I'm guessing It's spring training or. Or it's before game. And he's just taking some fielding practice because he has the practice jersey on. Right. He doesn't have an actual game jersey on. And you can actually see him squinting underneath it with the way that his face is. Plus, you've got the museum collection. You just have these silver lines, like a sheen over it. And it's beautiful. Right. Even the. Even the pinnacle. Bright yellow logo next to the black giant's hat. What a card. And it. It, thankfully it was, you know, it was like 12 bucks, I think 15 bucks. So you don't feel bad about it? You don't feel it's not one of those cards that you. You get it and think and then your heart sinks like, oh, God, I could have, you know, paid my mortgage with that for this month. It's just one. Like, oh, I guess it's just one less Domino's pizza. I'm going to order this this month. Right. It's just a beautiful card. Love it. Yu-Gi-Oh that's really cool. I bet. I bet that looks really neat in hand, too, with that sort of. At that silver part is do facts. I was gonna say. Is that Dufax? It is. It's two facts. That's cool. I like that, too. Like, when you see a card you weren't expecting to see and like, you have some sort of familiarity with the technology or the. The card stock or whatever, and you're like, that card probably looks really good in hand, like way better than it looks on screen or whatever. And that's the kind of vibe I get from this card here. Yu-Gi-Oh And then the photographer's proof. I actually got that one as well. It's more rare, but. Nah, this is the one that does. There's the base card, there's this one, and there's the photographers. But I think the museum collection is. Is the way to go. This one for sure. Nice. So you recently Beckett up a card similar to this one. I mean, not this car. Yu-Gi-Oh the situation was a little different. Like, so I had this. I have this 2013 Topps Chrome Bryce Harper gold Refractor with the Rookie Cup. I had had it on my watch list for a while and I thought it was priced right and all that stuff. And it was a card I was definitely considering. And then we did that episode with. With Dylan on our channel, overthinking baseball cards about cards we hope don't go to the moon anytime soon. And I think his last selection was the Rookie cup cards. And I. I can't Remember if I bought this before or after? I think it actually might have been before, but everything just kind of came together for me. I'm like, this card is really everything I want it to be. It's gold, it's got the cup, it's that sort of era of chrome that's a little bit shinier. Price is right. The only thing that is unfortunate about or unfortunate about this is the case is absolutely trashed. This has to be reholdered. It's just very scratched on the case. I'm going to send this to PSA and get a new in a new holder. Then I'll be able to fully appreciate it, I think. But, but Yu-Gi-Oh I had been wanting the trout of 2013 for so long and I still do, but I've realized I don't want to settle for a version that I don't necessarily want. And honestly the only version I want is the gold for Bryce Harper. I, I, I, I got this for probably, you know, 25, 30, 40 of what the Trout would cost. So. And you know, I like Bryce and I've got a really good Bryce harbor collection. So for me, when I started putting all the pieces together in my head of, of this card situation, it just, Yu-Gi-Oh like you said, it swept me off my feet. So really, really stoked on this one. It's hard to tell, but these are Zebra Zebra nice in hand. I've even been looking at other players from the set, which is something I don't normally do. I don't typically pivot to other subjects, but just because I like a set. But like, you know, if I could get like the McCutcheon or, you know, there's like a Zach Wheeler I think on ebay. That looks really good. So just stuff like that. But Yu-Gi-Oh it's the Trout one. Is that, is that the slide? He's sliding head first. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh that's, that's a, I think one of the all time great modern cards, but then there's other versions of it, but I just, I just can't, I don't know. I, They're. Yu-Gi-Oh like, I've even thought about the black a little bit, which I think we talked on about before, but I'm just not, I haven't seen one. I looked up some on Instagram and they do look pretty good, but again, it's just not a position that I really have in my collection represented. It's just again, my, my cards are, or my collection is very oriented towards gold, so I'm trying to keep it that way. Yu-Gi-Oh so this is definitely a car that kind of took me, took me, swept me off my feet. You know, the more I think about it, you know those old gold refractors, the old black Heritage refractors from the mid-2000s to about 2012, 2013. Yu-Gi-Oh more like 2010. Yu-Gi-Oh I used to kind of roll my eyes or poo poo. The idea that things don't. Net things now don't shine like they used to. But I, I'm really coming around to that idea that I don't know if it's a quality thing. I don't know if it's a material or a stock thing or if it's just cheaper to produce. But there is something for, for gold and for red refractors, like 2014 and earlier. Incredible. And then for the Black, it's about 2010 and earlier. Yu-Gi-Oh It just does not pop that way anymore. I don't think it does one-of-one It's. It doesn't. And it's tough to talk. I talk about it frequently, but I don't. It might sound like I like talking about it and I like complaining about it, but I honestly don't because I love this generation of baseball and I have a lot of friends that collect modern and I collect modern. But I mean, I don't know how else to say it other than to say the cards don't look as good. The quality of the cards is not as good. Now, you know, in terms of the chrome, in terms of the refracting, in terms of the. There's some nice car. It doesn't mean these cards are bad. They are being made by any stretch of the imagination in comparison to what was made in 2000-2005-2010-2000, even 2021. It's just not the same. And the only. Unless we get some type of explanation, we're going to jump to conclusions. And mine would be. It's just probably more efficiently to. Yu-Gi-Oh and a lot of people complain about little details like putting serial numbers on the front or just, you know, lazy sort of. I don't know, we all complain about like too many versions and stuff, but some of. Some of them do look really nice. Like, I like the new gold X fractures quite a bit that they came out or just the X factors in general that they added in chrome this year. But. But again, when there's a lava, there's a wave, there's a geometric logo fracture. It just makes them not viable really. You know, in 2013, this is the only gold. There's no wave, there's no, there's nothing else. Nothing. And this looks so good. So it's like, Yu-Gi-Oh it's. It's a challenge, man. And it's. It's got me really conflicted because the players I want to collect the most, Yamamoto, I don't like their cards the most. You know what I mean? So it's like, what am I going to do? Am I going to choose the subject and buy an inferior card, or am I going to pivot to a subject I don't like as much with a superior card? And that's. I feel I'm in this situation quite a lot. Like, I would much rather buy Yamamoto than Bryce Harper right now, but I would much rather buy this type of card than a 20, 25 parallel. You know what I mean? So. So, so I have an idea. This is. Yu-Gi-Oh I just thought about this now for. It'd be. Have to be a premium set because it would be expensive. But what if it was Heritage? And Heritage always throws back. But what if it threw back to the technology instead of just the design? And so they'd bring back, say, 2008 gold refractors. Sign me up, you know, and it might cost a lot, but that shine is there. Yu-Gi-Oh they can charge more, but price it up, man. I would love that, man. Why don't they do that? Why don't they, like, is it. I. I've asked like, my grandpa was a lithographer. He's not alive, so I can't ask him about this. But I'm sure there's people out there that know about printing, that know about this technology, that knows why things are different or, you know, there's no etching, it's not as shiny. Like, what is the reason? Is it just purely cost and just efficiency? Which is totally fine. I'm not trying to be judgmental, but just as a consumer, I guess we see this all across society or just all across the economy now, just with everything, you know, being made more efficiently, whether it's, you know, shrinkflation or all these, you know, whatever. Like, everything just a little bit shittier now than it used to be. So. I don't know. I mean. But Yu-Gi-Oh who make something that looks really good, something that's Zebra high quality and just charge more, we'll pay more for it. You know what I mean? Yu-Gi-Oh Upper Deck has figured that out, actually. You know, Upper Deck and, you know, they'll. They've come back with some of the retro PMGs. And granted, they're not just not Michael Jordan. It's not those old players but they brought them back for like modern hockey cards. They can do that. They could. And if you go back and read, I forget the book was from 94, 97, but the book Card Sharks, that's about the history of the founding. In the early years of Upper Deck. They actually had a lithographer on their initial team who talked about the printing technology that they could use. So hearing you talk about your, your grandpa. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh That was a key part of what made them who they were is the printing technology. And it matters. It's not just the card, it's not just the serial number but it's also like the stock and the quality visual appeal it is. We had Dylan on our show recently. He had those plates. I have a lot of old like advertising printing plates, like big like sheet pages that my grandpa used and stuff and those are really cool. And I do just wonder like this to me is the biggest missing element in the hobby right now. It's the quality of the current cards, not just the one of one peak, you know, whatever debut patch. I'm sure those look really nice and everything Zebra fractures and all this kind. But more of the cards should look good, you know, in terms of the, the in hand experience and you know how they feel and how they shine and all that kind of stuff. And it's why I just can't keep buying this stuff. Like I, I'm not buying almost anything from this era because again it's just I know what existed previously. If I didn't it would be different. But Yu-Gi-Oh So it's interesting to think about though for sure. I guess there's more money at stake now but take some risks. Take somewhere even like vintage. Go back to like to the pop up cards. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh And they should know people are going to pay whatever you charge. I mean if you, you say it's so premium, you know, technology people are going to line up around the block and pay you whatever you want. Just make it exist so we can buy like a few singles. You know, people don't like them. Now in the year 2046, people will be pining for some of these cards. There's no long term downside. Let me show you one more. And you know talk about fails and cards that just don't necessarily work. But they're cool that they tried it. It's a card I recently Beckett up. The card cost less than the shipping did but it's an amazing card. I can't imagine them trying that. Now the card itself and I'll show it in just a second. It's a 1997 Pacific Crown Gold of Brian Jordan, but it's got the gold shine. But they actually built an acetate window into it. So it's like the, the stuff that's going into this. Let me first, I'll show you the, the, the. Just the picture here. There's that one, right. So vertically it has its name going up in some really strong shine on that gold and it's got his picture and it doesn't quite work. There's a lot going on and the shine doesn't really apply the way that it should. But if I stop sharing that for a second, that's, that's the card I'm showing. I'm not holding up the actual version that is in hand, but to see the actual, the acetate version of it. That's nice, man. Yu-Gi-Oh To put acetate into a gold foil card. Great. Did it catch on? No, my screen is backwards. But it was built for the Spanish community because it has, it's one of the Spanish language specific cards. Right. I can't imagine how much they potentially could have lost on a card like this trying to put all these different elements into it. But it's here and it's memorable. And there are so many cards from the 80s to the 90s that are just decomposing somewhere that were just generic and just one after the next that I feel like sometimes I just want to be moved by some creativity. It's a beautiful card and beautiful sentiment and I think this is something that we, we need to keep talking about and keep exploring because I think it's important to reference just some of the history of, you know, the, the actual cards and the technology that was used in decades ago. So I'm glad we got here and let's, let's keep talking about it. Awesome, man. So, Yu-Gi-Oh design, Design matters. If and for those of you out there listening who have contacts, card companies, Upper Deck or LEAF or, or Fanatics, push them a little bit, tell them it's. It's time to try something new. Even if it fails, we'll, we'll support them. Yu-Gi-Oh charge us more. We'll pay for it. Thanks, everyone. Thanks clubhouse, everybody. See you.