By now most of you have heard about Topps’ latest fan interactive effort. They are conducting a poll on their facebook page to determine the three next die-cut cards to be put up as prizes in the Diamond Giveaway promotion.
From the title, you may think that this is just going to be an extension to my previous rant, but that’s where you’d be wrong. In general I think the Diamond and Million Card Giveaway Promotions were great successes and fantastic programs, and I think this contest/promotion/poll is a good thing, too. Fan and collector involvement is not a bad thing.
In fact, I want you to get involved. You see, one of the retired player match-ups is between Johnny Bench and a player I collect named Frank Thomas. I want you to vote for Johnny Bench.
Why? Why would I not want one of my guys to win?
Simply put, I don’t want to chase two more tough to get cards of the guy. If FT wins, he’ll have the normal card and the black diamond parallel, both of which are only initially available through the code system. I doubt I’ll be getting many more codes and unless you get a die-cut yourself, it’s pretty damn tough to trade for one. That means relying on ebay, which I’ve seen from Gwynn and Marmol, can get up there in price for the regular version.
Oh, and I already have Gwynn and Marmol to worry about. That’s already proving to be a challenge in and of itself. I don’t need another popular player to add to the list. The guy is retired, let him enjoy some time off from cardboard online exclusives.
I know I don’t need to try to get the Thomas die-cut (or the other two) right away, but let’s face it – it would be the best time. These are going to trickle into the secondary market as they currently are. Then we’re going to see one big flood around deadline delivery time, then back to trickle so the window will be small to pick them up. I haven’t dealt with eTopps stuff, but I imagine it’ll be priced similarly (aka higher than the print run would dictate if these were packed out instead). So, I need to hope I have the cash to take advantage of the flood if I wasn’t able to maneuver my way into them before hand.
On a somewhat related tangent, this question is for the other player collectors out there. Have you ever had a situation where your player wasn’t included in a set and you were offended, but also relieved? I experience that with Dempster and Marmol all the time. For instance, in this year’s Bowman I thought Marmol is a big enough roster player (and former All-Star, remember) to be in the non-prospect portion of the set. However, I was glad that I avoided another ridiculous set of parallels with his omission. Still looking for any and all Dempster from that set since I won’t buy a pack.
Back to the subject at hand. If you’re not going to take advantage of my repack trade bait below (nobody wants a numbered Chipper?), join my campaign and at least vote for Bench.
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