Señor McLinton

A one card mailday, but a pretty cool one. A 1977 Topps Mexican Harold McLinton, from a team set that I have been working on, off and on, for a long time. It's a little off-center, but in good shape and while not one of the "Dirty Dozen", it is still one of the harder cards in the set to come by. I hope to get this one to PSA, my dream is to PSA the whole team set, and hopefully there will be an update on that soon.

McLinton himself played for the Redskins from 1969-1978, and was named one the teams 70 Greatest Players in 2002. He died tragically in 1980. 

2017 Gypsy Queen - The Good, The Meh, and the Ugly

It has been a few weeks since 2017 Gypsy Queen dropped and having time to get used to this years offering of the only set I build every year, I came with up some thoughts on what was a very different product from past years.

The Good:
- The autographs are always gorgeous and this year they really shine with a slightly different, and in my view better design than the base cards. As with the base set, the parallels are pretty meh, but overall I am a huge fan of the autos and the checklist has a nice mix of current and retired players.
- The base card design has grown on me, it's not my favorite GQ design, but it is fine. I really dislike the top with the team name, if it was more like the auto design I would be a bigger fan. I love the card backs, the number in middle was a complaint of some, but after sorting two boxes worth of base I had no issues with it.
- The high end cards look great, booklets, auto patches and Leather and Laces all look good, but way to high end for me, for a retro style set Gypsy Queen does high end very well.

The Meh:
- The inserts were fine, but a little boring, I liked Fortune Tellers more than I thought I would. In the past we had photo-centric sets like Play at the Plate, Glove Stories and Sticky Fingers. Nothing like that this year. I really miss Glove Stories, there were some great cards in those sets.
- The parallels were a big "meh" for me, if you read this blog (or care to go back to Top Parallels posts One & Two) I like parallels that give something different and usually flashy. Leaving a players name off, taking the black out, or making the photo Black & White doesn't add anything, in fact it literally takes things away.
- The short prints going from 6 per box to 2. Less cards to chase, but less chance of pulling one, again leading to me not wanting to buy more packs.

The Ugly:
- I think 2017 Gypsy Queen will be remembered more for what it didn't have than what it did.
1. Minis and all the mini parallels - This one really bugged me, for me in the past it has added value in pc cards and trade bait. I would pick up the odd pack hoping for a cool mini, no chance of that now. I feel very certain I won't rip another pack of Gypsy Queen this year.
2. Framed parallels - These have been around since the start in 2011, and they wouldn't have been such a huge loss other than the fact this was the only set that did them, and if they were replaced by something worthwhile, but they were not.
3. Base and mini framed relics - I don't collect relics so this didn't bother me personally, removing them takes some value out of a box, but with the price drop, it's a wash.
4. Printing Plates - Did these get scrapped as well? I have seen none, just more value removed by Topps.

Summary: Overall, I am very disappointed in this years offering. I just feel Topps took a lot of the fun out of this set, comparing my wantlist to other years, I really don't care that much about anything other than the base set. I will admit, my two boxes sucked and if I had pulled a big card I might feel a but different, but if I knew this years product was so boring, I would have just bought a base set off ebay and chased the short prints. Topps if you are reading this, please, bring back mini's at least, come up with some good parallels, the mini retail foils last year were great, how about full size foil parallels, how about some acetate, even take the price back up, just please, do something interesting with it in 2018.

Gypsy Queen Set Help

Set help going both ways between Sportscards From The Dollar Store and myself, staring one of the box loaders, I am still torn between "looks amazing" and "hard to store/display", but leaning toward looks amazing.

Remember the Astrodome / TCDB Trade

A Trading Card DB trade that I didn't realize until later was with Remember the Astrodome, giving my first taste of 2017 Heritage. I will probably never be a huge heritage fan (unless they start the use in-game photo's, or until we get to 1971) but I always like the expanded checklist that give players like Saskatchewan born and Team Canada vet Dustin Molleken cards. I also get to check Cristhian Adames' weirdly spelled name off the One of Every Rockies checklist.

2017 Gypsy Queen Trade/Wantlist

Wantlist

Updated Feb 27, 2019

Base
Complete!

Short Prints
303, 305, 306, 307, 309, 314, 316, 317

Autos
Raimel Tapia, Trevor Story

Green Back
David Dahl, Ian Desmond

Tradelist

Base

6, 8, 8, 17, 21, 27, 29, 33, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 58, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 74, 76, 76, 80, 86, 88, 92, 94, 95, 97, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 112, 117, 124, 127, 130, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 152, 159, 160, 161, 164, 167, 174, 176, 179, 180, 181, 182, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 198, 201, 206, 208, 210, 215, 216, 218, 220, 223, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, 239, 242, 243, 246, 251, 254, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 269, 270, 272, 274, 275, 277, 290, 291, 292, 296, 298, 300

Short Prints
301

Purple
23 Blake Snell, 47 Solarte, 144 Lindor, 264 Adrian Beltre

Green Back
157 Kipnis

Missing Blackplate
100 Mookie Betts, 111 Freddie Freeman, 113 Edwin Encarnacion, 155 Max Kepler, 284 Tommy Joseph

Missing Nameplate
205 Alex Dickerson, 207 Hellickson

Original Art
CH2 Hamels, RC2 Cano, XB2 Bogaerts, RCL2 Clemens, MS1 Schezer, ZG2 Greikne

Fortune Tellers
Pujols, Trout, Cano, Ivan Rodriguez, Bregman, Lester, Hamels, Bumgarner

Purple Auto
Joe Musgrave

Glassworks
Jose Fernandez, Zack Greinke

2017 Gypsy Queen Box Break 2

Forgive my laziness but I am not breaking down the second box as much as the first. Mostly because they are so similar. A couple differences, box 2 contained 2 base doubles, and switch a Black & White parallel for a green back, that's about it. My box topper is Zack Greinke, despite the potential storage issues, these are very nice looking cards.

2017 Gypsy Queen Box Break 1

Just in time for Opening Day, my annual 2 boxes of Gypsy Queen show up. Topps really changed this brand up, and I will cover my thoughts on that more in my summary post, for this one I will just break down what a box gets you.

Budget Blown, Pelle Lindbergh PSA edition.

I go back and forth on grading, sometimes I think it's dumb and a waste of money, sometimes I drop over $100 on a slabbed card. This is second of the two. I think this is a new record holder for the most I have spent on a single card. As my collection fills out I am starting to value quality over quantity. This is about a quality as it gets.

A couple things sold me on this card, I have always wanted a PSA 10, it's in the new PSA case with the hologram, and Pelle Lindbergh, sadly, doesn't have many cards so it doesn't take long to build up a nice collection. I already had a decent copy from my collection as a kid, but this is a huge upgrade, and I haven't felt the buyers remorse yet (I actually got a really good deal to be honest) so that's a bonus.