anthony rizzo

My Topps Now Anthony Rizzo boo boo

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On September 30, 2018, Anthony Rizzo hit his 100th RBI of the season. Check out the video below courtesy of NBC Sports Chicago.

Look how excited and pumped that Rizzo is on that play! He’s jumping up and down like a little kid. I love it! The Cubs went on to beat the Cardinals that day 10-5. Now being that I really like Anthony Rizzo, I hopped on the Topps Now section of the Blowout Card Forums to voice my enthusiasm. Rumor has it that one of the Topps folks in charge of Topps Now cards monitors their forums. I wanted Rizzo to get a card celebrating his 100th RBI so I posted the following post to the group.

As you can see, I went as far as adding two sources for the card. I was happy, proud and confident I would persuade Topps to include Rizzo in the following day batch of cards. During the afternoon of the next day, I aggressively refreshed the Topps Now page to see if they had included Rizzo. When the new cards appeared, there was Rizzo. I was thrilled! As I looked closer at the description on the front of the card, it said the following:

4th in franchise history with 3 seasons of 30 HRs, 30 2Bs & 100 RBI

Hmm, how odd I thought. I didn’t remember Rizzo getting to 30 HRs. Before I looked at the stats, I got back on the forum. Others had noticed the incorrect stats. But I sourced it directly from MLB’s website! I went back to their website and read the article. I looked at the date of the article and it showed September 2, 2017.

I was in shock and disappointed in myself for posting an outdated article. Not only were folks on the forum frustrated, but I was also seeing people talking about this on Twitter. I felt terrible about this! I had to own it at this point so I went on the offensive. I posted to the forums and to Twitter that I was the one who suggested the card but posted the wrong link. I pleaded with Topps on Twitter that the stats were for the previous year and to use the first link from NBC Sports Chicago that correctly mentioned Rizzo as being the first Cubs lefty to get 100 RBIs in 4 seasons.

The next day I noticed the front of the card on the Topps website had changed to the correct stats. However, the back still mentioned the stats from 2017. I still hoped that it would be fixed once it was printed. I received the card today and the back is exactly the same as it was on the website. Drats!

I’m not sure why the folks at Topps didn’t check this a bit closer, but I still feel partly responsible for it. The folks on the forum seemed like it made for a good story. The Rizzo card turned out to be the second to last Cubs Topps Now card of the season as the Cubs were eliminated in the wild card game against the Rockies. Maybe next year!

Recent Anthony Rizzo acquisitions

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It’s getting closer to baseball season and I’ve found myself wanting to expand my Anthony Rizzo collection. The guy is such an inspiration on and off the field and his recent response to the school shooting at his old high school in Florida proves he is a leader. While I had a handful of his cards, I did not have any rookie cards. I had to change this.

I prefer to get graded rookie cards when I can afford it, but the PSA 10’s were a bit out of my budget. I have no problem getting PSA 9 cards to save a few bucks as I usually can’t tell the difference between a 9 and 10. I found the 2011 Topps Update #US55 Anthony Rizzo card on eBay that had a best offer on it. I haggled with the seller and we settled on $15 + shipping for the PSA 9. (the PSA 10’s are in the $40-50 range)

I am a big fan of getting batches of cards on eBay so I looked around for a Rizzo lot. I found one that had 25 cards and a best offer which I negotiated to $5.99 with free shipping. Not too shabby! I did notice one of the cards was not a Rizzo card so technically it’s 24 but not a big deal. They were all different which is good as I don’t really need any duplicates.

I also won an eBay auction for a 2018 Topps 1983 #83-54 Anthony Rizzo card along with the 2018 Topps Chrome Refractor #11 Anthony Rizzo. I’m guessing the Chrome version came from one of those silver packs that were included in the 2018 hobby boxes or cases.

I was reading through the buy/sell forum on the Blowout Cards Forum and someone was selling a 2018 Topps #50 Anthony Rizzo SP variation for $2 + shipping. I couldn’t pass that up so I told him I would take it. I sent him the money and he shipped within a day or two. He turned out to be super local and shipped at a post office 5 miles away from me. He shipped on February 22nd and I figured it would show up the next day. No luck. Surely by day 2 it would arrive. Nope. By the 25th, it was in the lovely state of in-transit. Seriously, we don’t have that many post offices in our city.

I had to wait 7 days to file a missing mail claim which I filed on March 1st. I waited a few more days with no change in the tracking or response from the USPS. At this point I figured it was lost in the mail. On March 7th, I received a text message from the USPS that my package was delivered to my PO Box in Champaign. I checked the box after work and sure enough it was there! I opened it up and the card was fine. Whew! What a journey it must have taken over just a few miles! I like the card and now I just need the SSP variation to complete the 3 card set.

Finally, I found some 2018 Topps Heritage blasters at Meijer the other day. This was my first encounter with them so I bought two blasters. The first box was rather boring but the second box was a hot box as it had a bunch of purple chrome cards in there. One of them was 2018 Topps Heritage Chrome #THC-20 Anthony Rizzo purple card which made me really happy. (I also pulled a Kris Bryant purple chrome in the same box!) The scan looks a little weird but I like the card a lot.

Target and Meijer run

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My wife and I had some errands to run so we stopped by Target and Meijer. Target has a much better baseball card selection than Meijer. I hadn’t bought any Bowman cards for awhile and they had some small packs so I got some of those. I also grabbed some Stadium Club as I wanted something different. Kris Bryant (on the box) kept staring at me, so I picked up a 2017 Topps series 1 hanger pack. (because I don’t have enough Series 1 stuff this year!) My wife picked out the Donruss football cards, but she gave them all to me after pillaging the Colts players. 🙂

2017 Bowman Baseball (4)
2017 Stadium Club Baseball (2)
2017 Topps Baseball Series 1 Hanger (1)
2017 Donruss Football (5)

In the Bowman packs, I landed a Tomoyuki Sugano /499 refractor card.

In the Stadium Club, I found an Anthony Rizzo card with an awesome picture of him standing on the wall to make the catch at Wrigley Field!

As for the Topps Series 1 cards, the only thing I really liked was the Toronto Blue Jays team card. Why a team card? Because this one was blue (well they are the Blue Jays) and has a serial # of 21/50! I’ve never found a blue card like this before so that’s really neat.

As for the 2017 Donruss football cards, it was a mixed bag. I landed my first Mitchell Trubisky card in the form of a Gridiron King which looks pretty snazzy. Not shown is a few other Bears players including a Walter Payton card. There were a lot of duplicates in the packs we picked up, so that was disappointing.

I found a Tony Romo card which didn’t excite me that much until I flipped it over and noticed a mention about my alma mater (Eastern Illinois University) on it.

I attended Eastern Illinois University during the same time that Romo was there in 2000/2001. While visiting the campus on September 11, 2010, I snapped a picture of the retired #17 Romo jersey next to the retired #18 jersey of Saints head coach Sean Payton.

FYI: Did you know that Patriots backup / future quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo played college football at Eastern Illinois University? I’d love to get some of his cards, especially ones showing him in an EIU jersey. 🙂