Best town to live

First of all...Happy New Year!

Now that is all done and set let get back to what it's important.

Baseball!

And Cards!

These passing days I've been trying to get me up to date with all your new posts.

You all have been quite active even during Holidays. I decided to get to other hobbys of mine.

I've played in my electric guitar since a looooooooong time ago!

Once learned never forget. Like riding the bike.

After this interlude in collecting I'm back to business.

I must say that all bloggers I follow got pretty good presents!

I envy you...

So much packs and most...so much choice!

I got yesterday my package with my 2011 A&G blaster box which I hope to talk about in some future posts.

So I cannot say I pass this Christmas without getting cards. They just arrived a week later.

But one thing caught my eye. Big time!

This:

Panini's Cooperstown cards.

First there is this special aura around Cooperstown.

You see, here in Portugal we don't have quite the same sport culture as in the USA.

Each club has its own museum with their history. And each club usually participate in different sports.

We don't have a museum for a sport alone. Like a museum for football or basketball.

That's a shame.

Because apart from a club's history, some moments are mainly a sport's history.

I love the Cooperstown concept.

I got pretty curious about this set just for this reason alone. But then I saw the cards.

They are a beautiful thing.

Don't you think?

Panini sure did a great job trying to pass the vintage greatness on this design.

You almost can touch the greatness of these players through these cards.

I've read in many other blogs that there is the issue about the 'avoid-showing-any-license-thing' going on because Panini does not have the MLB license.

Yep. They sure look like they bumped with the head against some painful wood cardboard.

Do you mind?

I truly don't!

If you collect for the team. I understand this set might not get must credit.

If you collect for players this is a great set!

A great player plays well in any team.

A great player is bigger than the team.

A great player is transversal throughout the sport he(and she) plays.

A great player is great none the same even if I cannot see all his cap in the card photo.

This is a player oriented set.

And that's the second reason I love this set.

I also posted before about liking black & white photos. And liking of seeing more of those in sets.

So there is the third reason.

From what I read, the base set is composed of 170 cards and the last 20 are the only ones with RGB photos.

They look great!

And that is once more to show that Panini did such a good job with the card design that it doesn't matter if the photo is on full colour, B&W or in vertical or landscape mode it looks simply gorgeous!

I envy every single one of you lot who already got some Copperstown cards.

Now looking at the card back:

It has an other photo!

And from what I could see they are not the same as the front one. Bonus photo is always welcome!

And look! A one line stats and lots of info to read!

Lots of collectors are way into stats and I'm not saying that I don't like having a players stats, but I truly like the trivia things and career milestones in text format.

It's different kind of piece of history in a card.

And I'm already with four reasons to love this set.

The set is not only composed by the base set but like in other products there are inserts.

I tend to like inserts in the usual flagship sets.

And from what I saw I like the Cooperstown inserts too.

Of course I've read many criticism about the inserts mainly because they feature a lot of text.

Cards with text usually are checklists. And those I'm the first to say I like them in a team photo for instance.

But these are different.

Maybe because I'm eager to learn about baseball history.

Ok...I know that at least a small photo could go here. I give you that. Like a bus pass like photo.

This as well could have a photo of the player batting the exactly homer it is described.

But then I found this particular insert:

Right from Nick's blog Dime Boxes -- The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey.

This post.

You got awesome cards!

And you are right, this ballpark cards are just great examples of what baseball is.

In the very moment I saw these cards I remember the Phil Rizzuto's Baseball National Pastime set.

Specially these cards:

There are 6 or 7 ballpark cards.

These cards are all chromium which makes them great looking.

The Coopertown ballpark cards are normal cards but look equally great!

Why?

Simply because you can feel the energy you can only get from going on a ballpark assist a ball game.

I only went to stadiums to assist football matches but I think they feel the same.

So...all in all...I'm waiting to see if some of the eBay sellers from which I usually by cards have a box of Panini's Cooperstown.

I'll buy it in the moment!



Note: Got all the pictures from Google search so they might be from other bloggers. Thanks.