Do you want to build a snowman?

The Topps Holiday release is one of my favorite each year.  It makes for a very fun rip and provides lots of joy along with a guarantee hit per box.  

It's nice to know that some parents rip these boxes with their kids and help bring younger generations into the hobby.  

For me, I just want those Andrew McCutchen cards though.  

Cutch had a base card, base metallic, Christmas tree ornament, snowman relic, hat relic, and hat relic autograph in the release.  I've manage to snag all the cards I needed and when that wasn't enough I set my eye towards making unofficial rainbows of the jersey relics.

Often times the jersey relics included in products like this, Topps flagship, Topps Heritage, and Allen & Ginter include plain jersey swatches.  

Sometimes there are so many jersey swatches for a player that they begin to "cut" into other jerseys to provide variety for the release.  

I've shown this off before with my Allen & Ginter Jersey rainbow.

Well, now it's time for 2021 Topps Holiday Wal Mart mega boxes to have the rainbow relic chase.

Pictured above are a jersey swatch from the baby blue throwback uniforms worn by the Phillies, a pin stripe home jersey, and a plain swatch from a home jersey.

Do you chase after different looking relics of the same card?

Let it snow, let it snow

If there's one good thing about Topps having an abundance of parallels to chase after, it's that there are cards for any occasion.  

Beginning Sunday night into this morning it snowed.

And snowed

And snowed

And snowed some more

The end results was over a foot of snow.  

Above are the 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020 Topps holiday cards.  The 2019 is also in my possession, but doesn't feature any snowflakes. 

Winter Storm Harper's forecast

In case you didn't hear Winter Storm Harper is coming through the United States this weekend.

And I'm not even talking about Bryce Harper potentially signing a monster size contract either.

No, I am talking about an actual Winter Storm consisting of snow, sleet, and flash freezing.  For those that will be dealing with it, be careful on the roads.

Here are 2 of my latest pickups.

The Chris Archer metallic snowflake parallel was given to me by my girlfriend on Christmas.  Awesome, right?

And then I got the base holiday card of Cutch.  I still need the metallic snowflake parallel.

We Got Archer!

We have heard the Chris Archer to Team X for the past few trade deadlines and offseasons.

The cost for acquiring the 2015 All Star and Cy Young candidate was steep as the Pirates traded away one of their top prospects, Austin Meadows, right handed pitcher Tyler Glasnow, and a PTBNL.  Meadows and Glasnow both have All-Star potential, but have had struggles early in their youmg careers.

Most of the early reports say the price for Archer was too much to give up.  While I wish that only one of Glasnow or Meadows was required to get Archer, the Pirates got a cost controlled pitcher for the next 4 post season runs.  The best part of the acquisition is that they were able to keep Archer away from Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.

If Archer can return to his 2015 All-Star season, the Pirates have a feature ace for a Wild Card game.

In other trade news, Andrew McCutchen wasn't traded by the Giants today.

Cutch hit a HR off Archer in the 2015 ASG.  It was Cutch's last plate appearance in an All-Star Game.

I feel like the Pirates got the golden ticket and a true difference maker in this year's trading deadline.

I still need a few more parallels from the 2015 Update Series where Cutch is coming home after his laser shot to left field.

The most notable need is the pink parallel which I would love to get for my October Pink month.

So far I have the base, sabremetric back, foilboard, gold, snow camo, and the black.

What do you think about the moves your teams made yesterday?

Do you think the Pirates gave up too much for Chris Archer?

Snow Way!!!! Not Happening!

In case you didn't hear, New Jersey got pummeled with snow last Thursday.  In Monmouth County we got over 13 inches.  Fortunately we didn't have any down power lines or anything too major happen.  I was able to stay indoors and took a personal day at work to avoid the hour commute.

I walked one block to Wawa to grab some groceries and a hot panini, but other than that during my down time I watched a lot of Netflix.

Meanwhile my favorite athlete ever was outside taking swings.

He also decided it was necessary to go running.

I wish I had that kind of ambition.
To remember the snow and my lack of ambition to do anything in a foot of that cold powdery nonsense, here's a 2016 Wal-Mart Holiday card.

Matt from Once A Cub is kind enough to be sending me the 2017.
Our community is the best!!!

Today we are supposed to get a nasty ice storm in the afternoon.  I hate the ice more than snow.