The One and A What?
Mar. 27th, 2024 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
onepageatatimeSo this morning was an… interesting… day for opening sports cards. I opened two packs: a pack of this year's Topps Series 1 baseball cards and one of this season's Panini Prizm Premier League packs. Each had an "I've never gotten anything like that before" in it.
First, the baseball pack had a "Home Run Challenge" card. If I scratch to reveal the code, I can go online to predict a date that Paul Goldschmidt will hit a home run. If he does, I'd get a parallel card. (With the option of trying for a special parallel card if I correctly guess that it will be more than 425-feet.) And, just for entering, I'd end up with a chance of winning a trip to the 2025 Home Run Derby. Mostly… this just seems like a headache. For the moment, I'm keeping it unscratched. I suspect that there is little enough value either way that there's no wrong answer. But I don't want to rush into a decision that I might regret, especially when the upside is so small: a chance at… another card, and an even smaller chance at a trip.
But looking into that will be slightly delayed, because the soccer cards give me my next investigation, because… I got my first "1 of 1" card, i.e., there is only one of this particular design that was printed. So I've put it in a protective case. But… I'm not getting ahead of myself. For one thing: the player's name isn't one I recognize. And it's soccer, which I know isn't as big as other sports here in North America. But I also have a mystery to figure out: which design is it. The database I normally use to record cards doesn't have photos of most of the "parallel" designs of this product. And there are something like five different parallel designs for this set that are each serial numbered to 1. And the descriptions are so similar that I can't tell from their names which one my card might be. And because of the way these cards reflect, I'm not sure whether my photography ability would show it well enough for somebody else to help.
So… I'll enjoy my shiny new things… and look forward to the learning about them in the hours and days ahead
First, the baseball pack had a "Home Run Challenge" card. If I scratch to reveal the code, I can go online to predict a date that Paul Goldschmidt will hit a home run. If he does, I'd get a parallel card. (With the option of trying for a special parallel card if I correctly guess that it will be more than 425-feet.) And, just for entering, I'd end up with a chance of winning a trip to the 2025 Home Run Derby. Mostly… this just seems like a headache. For the moment, I'm keeping it unscratched. I suspect that there is little enough value either way that there's no wrong answer. But I don't want to rush into a decision that I might regret, especially when the upside is so small: a chance at… another card, and an even smaller chance at a trip.
But looking into that will be slightly delayed, because the soccer cards give me my next investigation, because… I got my first "1 of 1" card, i.e., there is only one of this particular design that was printed. So I've put it in a protective case. But… I'm not getting ahead of myself. For one thing: the player's name isn't one I recognize. And it's soccer, which I know isn't as big as other sports here in North America. But I also have a mystery to figure out: which design is it. The database I normally use to record cards doesn't have photos of most of the "parallel" designs of this product. And there are something like five different parallel designs for this set that are each serial numbered to 1. And the descriptions are so similar that I can't tell from their names which one my card might be. And because of the way these cards reflect, I'm not sure whether my photography ability would show it well enough for somebody else to help.
So… I'll enjoy my shiny new things… and look forward to the learning about them in the hours and days ahead