Most Annoying: Obama or W.B.C.?

In the age of the Internet, it’s rare to find collectors agreeing on anything. From the battle of stickers vs. on-card, to high-end vs. low-end, there are hundreds of different views being argued every single day on card-related forums and blogs.

One thing collectors as a whole have agreed on is that card companies have flooded the market with useless, unwanted World Baseball Classic and Obama trading cards. Topps even released an entire Obama set, while you can’t open a single Upper Deck product this year without pulling a card of the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

My choice for most annoying of 2009 goes to the constant World Baseball Classic cards being included in Topps products. It’s bad enough that we were being forced to believe that the games meant anything (they don’t) but when we get a bunch of no-name guys from packs of cards, it’s just a complete bummer.

Obama cards still sell surprisingly well on the secondary market, even though they’ve been done to death. These days, you will have to pull a low-numbered insert and/or rare parallel to cash in so expect many unwanted Obama cards in your collection.

Who gets your vote for most annoying of 2009?

Obama cut signature in Sportkings

Below is a scan of the Sportskings Barack Obama ‘The First Pitch’ cut signature. Along with Obama, you have a chance to pull cuts of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, both George W’s and much more.

Sportskings will be released on July 29th. You can see more images HERE.

Baseball Card Commandment #3

Thou shall not insert politically-themed cards into every product

Look, I’m all for patriotism. I vote, pay my taxes, and love this country. I may be a foreigner but despite being born in South America, it’s been over twenty years since I stepped foot in Florida and not once have I gone back to Venezuela.

That being said, enough with cards of presidential candidates, presidents, and their dogs in packs of baseball cards. I’m happy for Barack Obama and his supporters but I don’t need to see him in every single product of 2008, 2009, and beyond. Don’t even get me started on his puppy.

Note: cards of Sarah Palin are OK cause I like her in a special way.

Previous commandments: 1, 2

Will Obama rule the Hobby in 2009?

Barack Obama is officially our nation’s 44th President and with this you can expect Upper Deck, Topps, and the rest of the companies to milk it for as long as humanly possible. It looks like we are not the only ones getting inundated with Barack Obama crap, just watch what Lewis Black has to say about it (LINK).

It’s great that we have a President in office who is a baseball fan but really… can we save the rest of the Obama cards for this set? I hope we are not going to have to sit through a ‘Road to 500’ type set from any of the companies with regards to Barack OBama… or worse, an Obama “Super Short Print” card from 2009 Topps.

You can guess what the 2009 Topps gimmick will be HERE.

Baseball cards for perverts!

By now it does not matter if you love them or absolutely loathe them, you have one or twenty Upper Deck Presidential Predictor trading cards in your collection. While I am totally against including any type of political figures in our baseball products, sometimes it works and in my opinion, this set worked. Upper Deck has a nice gallery of some of the set HERE.

The artist responsible for the work is famed caricature illustrator, Court Jones. While Upper Deck commissioned him for several pieces for their 2008 products, a few were just too risque for a kid’s hobby. Trading card company, Bench Warmer had no problem paying for the pieces and releasing them directly through their website. As you can see, both pieces had the potential to create much controversy had anyone they existed.

These two limited edition cards will run you $19.95 for the set (link).

You can view Court Jones’ other pieces by clicking HERE.