2023 Trading Card Day Cub

 Last year Topps changed the name of National  Baseball Card Day to International Trading Card Day.  They kept the new name in 2023 as well.  The day celebrates not only baseball, but other international sports and and entertainment also.

This years date was August 5 and free backs were given out to anyone visiting a card shop that day.  There were 30 baseball cards available, one player from each team.

Cody Bellinger was the Cubs player.

Look carefully at the back and you can see a move that is classic Topps.  

See the card number?  It is NTCD-B6.  The B is baseball but the NTCD I'm assuming is for National Trading Card Day.  Should the N be an I since it is International Trading Card Day???

2023 T206 High Series Cubs...And They Messed Up Billy

 In the past, the T206 set was released in waves of 50 or 100 cards.  The sets ended up with 500 cards.

Topps changed things up this year as the set came out in just two releases of 150 cards each.  And Topps got real creative with the names, called the two issues the Low Series and High Series.  The High Series cards were released on October 26 (another of the after the season is over sets).

Six Cubs were included on the checklist, three current and three retired.

 

 

 

While I am happy to see Billy Williams included, I think that they really messed up the picture.

Look at all of those black dots on his jersey.  That's not a dirty scanner bed, they are really on the card.  None of the other cards have those, so what happened here?  His face is also messed up.  It looks like he spent the day playing in the dirt.

I found the original photograph (1968 at Shea Stadium) and it is crystal clear.  Look at the sharpness of his jersey.  Whatever software they use to make the fake paintings from photographs did not do a good job at all.  They got the jersey and face messed up, but the bat and the #19 on the knob are sharp.  Yikes.

44% After the Season is Way Too Many

There are 129 Cubs cards in this mosaic.  They are 44% of the 296 2023 Cubs cards that I have purchased this year.  They were all bought after the season ended on October 1.  I find that to be ridiculous.

It's not that I was putting off my purchases. I try to get my cards within a couple weeks of their release.  The problem is the release dates, with so many coming after the season has ended.

In the old days, after the season you would have the update set and maybe one or two others.  I get that after covid, with the supply issues, products were delayed.  But by 2023 that shouldn't be the case any longer.  Sadly, it still is.

What makes the problem look worse is all the products that Topps cancelled for this year.  Not having Gypsy Queen, Fire, Gold Label, Gallery, and others has cut into the number of cards I have for this year.  My 2023 total is going to be about 65% of the total cards I had from a few years back, and an even smaller percentage from the 2016 and 2017 numbers.  Having 129 post-season cards out of a smaller number of total cards really jacks up that percentage.

I looked at 2019, the last pre-covid year, to see how out of whack the 2023 numbers are.  I have 496 cards from 2019 and just 296 from 2023.  Of the 496 cards from 2019, there are 91 that were bought after the season ended, which is just 18%.

And I'm not done with 2023.  We still have Stadium Club and Heritage High numbers coming out, which will boost the 44% even higher.

Baseball cards should come out during the baseball season, not the football season.

2023 Panini Chronicles Cubs

Chronicles is the weirdest of all the sets put out by any company, in my opinion.  It consists of a base set and then 22 different insert sets.  Yes, 22.

The base Chronicles set is made up of just 35 cards.  Yes, 35.

And since this is a Panini product, it has no active players and no logos.

Yes, a very weird product.

Somehow the Cubs were given two players on the 35-player checklist.

Mark Prior I have heard of.

Will Fritch I have not.  Topps has not either as the only set that included him in 2023 is Chronicles.  He has never been in Bowman, Pro Debut, or Heritage Minor Leagues.  

Here's the reason for Topps' exclusion:  He was drafted by the Cubs out of Oregon State as their sixth round pick in 2022.  But he had Tommy John surgery in the spring of 2022, a few months before the draft.  He is still recovering and has yet to throw a single inning for the Cubs organization.  In fact, the last time he pitched was for OSU in 2021.

So in a set with no active players and no logos, we get a card of someone who has yet to toss a single professional pitch.

Yes, Chronicles is a very weird set.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 21,330 Cubs cards from 316 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1976 O-Pee-Chee #227 Oscar Zamora I love to look of this card, with the low angle of the picture.  So who far down did the photographer have to get?

1980s: 1988 Fleer #419 Shawon Dunston One of just a few of Dunston's cards that don't show him with a huge grin.

1990s: 1992 Pinnacle #414 Mike Morgan This is a pretty plain looking card for something called "Pinnacle."  And the way the card is cropped, it looks like Morgan is getting decapitated.

2000s: 2007 Team Issued Upper Deck #1 Alfonso Soriano The Cubs partnered with Upper Deck on this card, which was included in the first edition of the 2007 game program.  

2010s: 2016 Stadium Club #199 Hector Rondon Hector looks pretty pumped here.  With the bunting along the brick in the background, I'm assuming that this if from a playoff game. Rondon got the save in game four when the Cubs clinched the NLDS against the Cardinals.

Eighties Alphabetically - Action Packed

 Action Packed is more well-known for the 168-card set that was released in 1992 and 1993. However, they also had a test release in 1988.  It was done with the hopes of receiving an MLB license.  They six-card test must not have impressed the decision-makers, because they didn't get the license until another stab at it four years later.

Coming off of his MVP season in 1987, Andre Dawson was among the six players included in the test set.

Justin Steele Follows the Rules

 

Justin Steele got his first relic card in the 2023 Topps Update set.  As a member of the NL All-Star team, Steele was included in the All-Star Stitches insert set.  That means he follows my relic collection rule, having a relic card in a season he played for the Cubs, showing him as a Cub.

There are now, by my research, 105 different Cubs players that have met my rule and I have a relic card for each of them.

Arismendy Alcantara	Kyuji Fujikawa	Christopher Morel
Albert Almora	Kosuke Fukudome	Bill Mueller
Moises Alou	Nomar Garciaparra	Jose Nieves
Adbert Alzolay	Matt Garza	Mike Olt
Jake Arrieta	Mark Grace	Corey Patterson
Javier Baez	Mark Grudzielanek	Joc Pederson
Darwin Barney	Jason Hammel	Felix Pie
Cody Bellinger	Ian Happ	Juan Pierre
Francis Beltran	Rich Harden	Mark Prior
David Bote	Brendan Harris	Aramis Ramirez
Kris Bryant	Kevin Hart	Anthony Rizzo
Damon Buford	Kyle Hendricks	Addison Russell
Marlon Byrd	Jason Heyward	Jeff Samardzija
Jeimer Candelario	Bobby Hill	Kyle Schwarber
Victor Caratini	Rich Hill	Jorge Soler
Andrew Cashner	Nico Hoerner	Alfonso Soriano
Welington Castillo	Eric Hosmer	Sammy Sosa
Starlin Castro	Todd Hundley	Geovany Soto
Aroldis Chapman	Brett Jackson	Justin Steele
Hee Seop Choi	Jacque Jones	Marcus Stroman
Tyler Colvin	Eric Karros	Seiya Suzuki
Willson Contreras	David Kelton	Dansby Swanson
Pete Crow-Armstrong	Craig Kimbrel	Matt Szczur
Juan Cruz	Bryan LaHair	Ryan Theriot
Yu Darvish	Junior Lake	Josh Vitters
Wade Davis	Derrek Lee	Darryle Ward
David DeJesus	Jon Lester	Todd Wellemeyer
Ryan Dempster	Ted Lilly	Randy Wells
Blake DeWitt	Kenny Lofton	Rondell White
Jason Dubois	Greg Maddux	Patrick Wisdom
Jim Edmonds	Trey Mancini	Jerome Williams
Carl Edwards	Carlos Marmol	Kerry Wood
Mike Fontenot	Gary Matthews, Jr.	Carlos Zambrano
Dexter Fowler	Fred McGriff	Ben Zobrist
Jackson Frazier	Matt Mervis	Julio Zuleta