​The 2019 Leaf Draft football set gives collectors a taste of some of the likely players to be taken in the NFL draft, which begins April 25.

A blaster box gives collectors a nice yield, too, including the promise of two autograph cards.

The 100-card base set is broken down into 69 cards, with an additional 11 All-American cards, 10 Touchdown Kings and 10 Draft Flashback cards.

There are some good things about this set. Collectors will get some early looks at projected draft picks like Kyler Murray, Dwayne Haskins, Josh Allen, Devin White and Ed Oliver. Besides any set that contains a player named Greedy Williams is tops in my book.
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Andraez Williams got the nickname “Greedy” from his grandmother when he was young. If he gets drafted by an NFL team and makes the roster, he will rise to the pantheon of great pro football names along with Happy Feller and Fair Hooker.

The two autographs per box is also a plus, and while it’s nice they are in top loaders, it would be a good idea to also put them inside penny sleeves since they are loose in the box. They seemed to be snugly inside the top loader, but they were open-ended.

The most glaring negative about this set is that Leaf had to airbrush logos and team names from the players’ helmets and uniforms. It’s a licensing issue, and while understandable, the washed-out look does detract a little bit from the design.
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The card front design features a vertical, color photo (except for the Flashback cards, which are black-and-white). The Leaf logo is positioned in the upper left-hand corner of the card, while the Draft logo is situated beneath the photograph. The player’s name is listed in white, block letters underneath. The team name is not mentioned on the card front.

The line patterns on each side of the card create a hexagon effect, and if you put two cards side by side, the lines will match up perfectly. It’s not a bad look.

The team name is listed on the card back within a six-line biographical sketch that is placed underneath the player’s photo in an octagon-like shape. The card number is at the top middle part of the card back.

Those parallel lines are also prevalent on the reverse of the card, and one gets the same effect when placing one next to another. This holds true with the patterns at the top and bottom of each card, too.
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A blaster box contains 10 cards, with 10 cards to a pack. It’s very possible one could finish the base set with perhaps two – or three – blasters. Each pack contains a gold parallel.

​I pulled 54 of the 59 “regular” cards, eight Touchdown Kings, 10 All-American cards and eight Flashbacks. The Flashbacks are interesting cards because they are in black and white, which gives them a nice retro feel. Some of the Flashback cards I pulled included John Elway, Roger Staubach, Dick Butkus, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman and Brett Favre.

There was one insert -- one Murray Touchdown Kings card, which is part of a three-card subset.

The two autograph cards were signed on stickers. One was a base card — Ole Miss offensive lineman Greg Little — while the other was a gold parallel of Missouri tight end Kendall Blanton. The team names are nowhere on the card, nor is the player’s position. I had to look those up. Ugh.
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Overall, however, the 2019 Leaf Draft set is a nice snack heading into the NFL draft. There is a good chance that many of the players in this base set will find their way onto an NFL squad, either on draft day or later as a free agents.
Time will tell.

Here's a first installment of a two-part series I wrote for Sports Collectors about sports autograph dealer and appraiser Les Wolff and his advice for collectors on how to keep their cards and memorabilia safe and protected:
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www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/protecting-your-investment-les-wolffs-advice-for-memorabilia-collectors/

Here is a conversation I had with Ron Keurajian, author of "Baseball Hall of Fame Autographs: A Reference Guide," on the New Books in Sports podcast, part of the New Sports Network:

newbooksnetwork.com/ron-keurajian-baseball-hall-of-fame-autographs-a-reference-guide-mcfarland-2018/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing the 2019 Topps Heritage High Number baseball set:
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www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2019-topps-heritage-high-numbers-emphasize-rookies-trades-free-agents/

​I can still see Cleon Jones genuflecting after catching Davey Johnson’s fly ball to left field, ending the 1969 World Series and ending the New York Mets’ most wonderfully improbable season on a joyous note.

Taking a knee had a more religious tone 50 years ago. That’s because the Mets winning the World Series was nothing short of a miracle. The ragtag franchise, which debuted in 1962 with 120 losses and had never finished better than ninth place in the National League, was on top of the baseball world.

“Good memories,” Tom Seaver tells Bud Harrelson when some of the Mets gathered to meet the pitcher and swap stories in 2017.

There are plenty of good memories in After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the ’69 Mets (Simon & Schuster; hardback; $28; 325 pages), but the book, written by former major leaguer Art Shamsky and author Erik Sherman, is alternately happy and sad. The book takes on added poignancy now in the wake of Seaver’s dementia, announced March 7 by the Hall of Fame pitcher’s family.

The book begins with Shamsky organizing a mini-reunion of some of the 1969 Mets, including himself, Harrelson, Jerry Koosman and Ron Swoboda. The foursome traveled to California in May 2017 to meet with Seaver, who had been suffering from Lyme disease since 1991.

What happens in between the first and final chapters is magical, as Shamsky, Harrelson, Koosman and Swoboda piece together the Mets’ 100-62 regular season, their three-game sweep of the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS, and their shocking World Series victory against a Baltimore Orioles team that won 109 games during the regular season and swept to victory in the ALCS.

​Shamsky and Sherman team up well in this book. Shamsky, 77, played eight years in the majors, including four with the Mets (1968-1971), and was particularly productive during the miracle season, batting .300 in 100 games with 14 home runs and 47 RBI. Shamsky was platooned in right field with Swoboda, who hit against left-handers that season.

While both players chafed in their part-time roles, they accepted them, especially since Mets manager Gil Hodges was not going to budge.

“We knew who the boss was, didn’t we?” Seaver asked his former teammates.

It was Hodges, the first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the late 1940s and 1950s who regrettably has not been elected to the Hall of Fame.

After baseball, Shamsky worked in New York as a sportscaster and later joined ESPN. In 2004, he wrote The Magnificent Seasons: How the Mets, Jets and Knicks Made Sports History and Uplifted a City and the Country.

Sherman, meanwhile, has written a book about the 1986 Mets (Kings of Queens) and co-authored autobiographies with Johnson, Glenn Burke, Steve Blass and Mookie Wilson.

In After the Miracle, Sherman wisely steps back and allows Shamsky to drive the narrative from his own point of view. His conversations with Seaver and memories with his three traveling partners create a warm nostalgia and some great dialogue as they trade anecdotes. Sherman comes in at the beginning and end, helping to prod the players’ memories and bring back vivid stories from a half century ago.

The Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by nine games in the NL East by Memorial Day, but then ripped off an 11-game winning streak in June and early in the season.

Seaver pitched a near-perfect game against the Cubs on July 9, allowing a single in the ninth inning to rookie Jimmy Qualls, and the acquisition of Donn Clendenon put some more pop into the Mets’ lineup.

“Clink,” as Clendenon was called, liked to have himself paged every five minutes “just to hear his name.” His direct opposite, third baseman Ed Charles, was the team’s oldest player, read poetry and was nicknamed “the Glider." Anyone who saw Charles dance in the infield after the final out of the 1969 World Series would be hard-pressed to argue.
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The Mets finally caught the Cubs in September, rolling past a talented but obviously frazzled squad worn out by the divisional race and the tense clubhouse atmosphere created by Chicago manager Leo Durocher.

That tension contrasted sharply with the youthful, free-wheeling Mets, Shamsky stresses that while the Mets had diverse personalities, “we had practically no genuine friction at all.”

That free spirit kept the Mets loose, and that’s what Shamsky said he misses most. Swoboda, a “flower child,” argued politics with ultraconservative pitcher Don Cardwell. Pitcher Ron Taylor sat on the clubhouse floor “reading Socrates or some medical journal.” Catcher Jerry Grote was avoided for his grumpiness, while ebullient young reliever Tug McGraw was liable to say or do anything.
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“It’s the friendships, the camaraderie, the characters, the freedom to say anything you wanted, and the ability to deal with adversity in whatever way worked best for you where I feel the greatest void,” Shamsky writes. 

Seaver was the staff ace, winning 25 games en route to his first of three NL Cy Young Awards, but Koosman was the toughest of the young pitchers, not afraid to throw high and tight to send a message to opposing teams. It was Koosman who pitched two gritty victories in the World Series, including the clincher in Game 5. And yet, infielder Wayne Garrett called the left-hander “our comedian.”

The book also sheds some light on the game when Hodges walked out to left field to remove Jones from a July 30 contest against the Houston Astros. The players still speak with reverence of Hodges, who died during spring training in April 1972, two days shy of his 48th birthday.

When Shamsky and his teammates met Seaver at his California home, the memories flowed like the wine the former pitcher bottled from his vineyards. They argued whether Game 2 or Game 3 of the World Series was more pivotal for the Mets and needled one another like all ballplayers do. Sherman does his part, asking questions and making statements that acted as effective prompts for the aging players.

But the emotions crest when Seaver asks Shamsky, “how the hell did I get to be seventy-two years old? How did that happen to us, Art?”

It happens to all of us, but as Shamsky writes, the memories of what the Mets did in 1969 will never fade.
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 “We were the closest teammates during the best of times,” Shamsky writes.
Fifty years. It seems like only yesterday that the Amazin’ Mets were kings of baseball. In After the Miracle, the reader goes down memory lane with some of the men who made that season amazing.

​The 2019 Topps Heritage set follows the same pattern as its predecessors, spotlighting a vintage product and copying the subsets and inserts from the older set. The 2019 product uses the design of the 1970 Topps set, which is one of the more austere designs of the 1970s.

Some fun facts about the 1970 Topps set: The price of packs doubled from a nickel to 10 cents. For the first time in a Topps set,  the player’s nameplate was in script, rather than the block letters that had been part of the annual run since 1952.

Also, for the first time, card No. 1 in the set was a team photograph of the previous season’s World Series champions. In the case of the 1970 set, the photograph was of the 1969 Mets, who stunned the Baltimore Orioles by winning the Series in five games. The card was adorned with “World Champions” at the top of the card.
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Topps had experimented with the champions format before. Card No. 1 of the 1967 set was called “The Champs” and featured Baltimore Orioles manager Hank Bauer flanked by Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson.

The 2019 Topps Heritage set follows the template of the 1970 set, putting a team photo of the Boston Red Sox as its first card. The difference this time around is that the top of the card reads “World Series Champions,” making the proper distinction between 1970’s more provincial “World Champions” designation.

As I’ve done in the past, I buy a blaster box for $19.99 and describe the contents. A blaster box contains eight packs, with nine cards to a pack.
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The base set has 500 cards, with the final 100 cards designated as short prints. Within the first 400 cards there are several subsets that mirror the 1970 version: league leaders (Nos. 61-72), NLCS (Nos. 195-198), ALCS (No. 199-202), World Series (Nos. 305-310) and All-Stars (Nos. 351-369).

The card fronts sport a vertical design, with a posed shot of a player batting or pitching. The team name is in block letters at the top, mostly in the left-hand corner and overlaid over the player’s photo. A gray border frames the player’s photograph. Rookie cards contain two players, stacked one on top of the other in a vertical design. These are probably the best-looking rookie cards Topps has put out; certainly, the best they had during the 197os.

The card backs are dominated by blue and yellow backgrounds. The blue square contains a biographical summary of the player, printed in white ink. The player’s name is in white block letters at the top of this box, with vital statistics beneath it. A yellow rectangle contains year-by-statistics, and the top right of the card features a cartoon against a white background.

The inserts I pulled from the blaster will be familiar to collectors. In my box, I pulled a News Flashback card of Janis Joplin. That card is part of a 15-card subset. Baseball Flashbacks, another staple of Heritage sets, also contains 15 cards. The insert I pulled was of Rod Carew. 

 New Age Performers, another old standby, is a 25-card insert set. The card I pulled was of Juan Soto. Then and Now, a 15-card insert that spotlights a player from the past with a current star, also was included in the box I opened. My card featured Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew and J.D. Martinez of the World Series champion Boston Red Sox.

Some blaster boxes contain relics, and I pulled a Clubhouse Collection card of Edwin Encarnacion.
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While I did not find them in the blaster box I opened, some collectors may find Story Booklets and Scratch-Off cards. The booklets can only be found in retail stores. The scratch-offs originally appeared as inserts in 1970 and 1971 packs.

Walmart and Target have their usual retail exclusive cards. A Walmart-specific insert is a set of cloth sticker cards, while Target has small, rounded candy lid inserts.
For those who buy hobby boxes, top loaders mirror the thick Topps Super cards of 1970. Other top loaders include 1970-like posters, numbered to 70.

Topps opened the 1970s cautiously with its first flagship product of the decade. The wrapper design for packs used for the 1970 set are also used for the 2019 Heritage set, although the price is much higher than 10 cents now. The original set contained 720 cards, which was a record for Topps. Topps was still producing high series cards, so the 100 short prints for the Heritage set reflects the difficulty of completing the set.
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While the 1970 Topps set may seem solemn and non-descript, it comes to life in the Heritage series. The card stock is nicer and the photography is much sharper. Collectors can now look ahead to the 2020 Heritage set, which will pay tribute to the black bordered cards of the 1971 Topps set. Condition was a challenge back then, but it will be much easier in 2020.

Here is a podcast I did with Cesar Brioso, author of "Last Seasons in Havana," on the New Books Network:

newbooksnetwork.com/cesar-brioso-last-seasons-in-havana-the-castro-revolution-and-the-end-of-professional-baseball-in-cuba-u-nebraska-press-2019/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a San Francisco-based company that gained a license to producd MLB action figures:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/super7-launches-line-of-licensed-baseball-greats-action-figures/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing the 2019 Bowman Sterling baseball set, which hits the stores in August:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/bowman-sterling-returns-as-standlalone-product-after-5-year-absence/

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about NHL great Ted Lindsay, who died March 4 at the age of 93. This story focuses on seven vintage hockey cards featuring "Terrible Ted."

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/remembering-ted-lindsay-seven-cards-of-no-7/