Encapsulation

We live in an era of encapsulation.

If you ask the masses, the current mode of "enjoying" a card is sealing it up in a case and never holding it again. I've mentioned this many times on the blog before - I don't mean to keep beating a dead horse here - but I just don't understand grading, and never will. The money & flipping part is one thing, but I hear about people grading their own stuff all the time - to which I say, why pay someone to tell you what you already have? And worse, keep you from ever touching it again?

I move my cards within my binders a lot, and should probably do a little better job of preserving my cards than I do. I'm not endorsing a return to the time where we'd throw cardboard against brick walls and fold them into our pockets (though we could learn a lot from those days). But I've always needed to touch my cards to truly make them feel like they're mine. Without that, they're little more than images that exist in a world just beyond my reach.

Which is why I wasted no time in jailbreaking this encapsulated and "uncirculated" Sandy Alomar Jr. refractor I generously received from a reader named Xavier H. recently - to me, it seems like the only sane thing to do.

You can tell Xavier has good taste in cards, because who else would send me a stack of UD 40-Man singles, knowing the joy I'd get out of them?

This set is kind of the stepchild of Topps Total, but it was a bit more expensive and never really lasted in the way Total did - you've got a lot of star power in this scan, but 40-Man is great for those of us who want to see bench players and middle relievers more often.

I mean, has anyone ever graded an Upper Deck 40-Man card?

(He asks, not really wanting to know the answer.)

Me: I feel a little weird when someone sends me Dodger cards since I'm a long, long ways away from being the most prominent Dodger fan on the blogs.

Also me: Woo-hoo! Both guys I collect, and both needs!

A few of the other recent odds and ends Xavier sent along, including a new card for my growing Seiya Suzuki collection and a nifty skyline-themed Topps Chrome insert.

I live in willful ignorance of those late '80s Topps Big sets - I know there's stuff in them I need, but the originals are both taller and longer than standard cards ('89 Bowmans are just taller) and thus don't fit in a nine-pocket page.

 If these Archives inserts are any indication, I like Topps Big a lot more when it's regular-sized and shiny (Nolan Ryan Mets sighting!).

Here's a few cards from fancier sets that you don't see in trade packages too often (and probably graded all time time) - Transparent Donruss is at least Kinda Interesting Donruss.

Xavier was also nice enough to send me my first jersey card of Tim Anderson, one of my favorite dudes in the game right now.

I'm not nuts about memorabilia-centric stuff - at this point I treat them like any other insert - but this was still fun to see fall out of a trade package. And yes, you know I had to run my thumb over the fabric the minute I saw it, because that, to me, is what collecting is all about. I'd never be able to do that if I just ran to get it graded, or put it in a one-touch, toploader, etc., etc.

Cards, like humans, need to live their best lives - and if you ask me, they can't do that in a plastic shell.