<|endoftext|> the packaging was so nondescript that I had to see what was inside. The wrapper says only that these are ��distributed by The Fairfield Company,�� and that I should expect ��10 Hall of Famer Cards�� and, in one out of every four packs, a ��Game Used Card.�� I got lucky; my pack did contain a game-used card, from Upper Deck��s 2007 line. It��s a thick Andruw Jones card with a small square of fabric embedded—presumably a piece of sock or pant or sweatband that Jones wore. As for the other 99 cards, they were a true grab-bag: some Topps, some Fleer, some Donruss, and even a few Score and Leaf cards. The oldest cards in the pack were from 1981; the most recent was that 2007 Andruw Jones. Most were from the late ��80s, which offered a timely reminder of how Topps has paid homage to its own past before, most notably in ��87 (with the wood-grain frame again) and ��88 (with the retro-style poses and layout).
What fascinates me most about the current old-fashioned look is that it��s clearly aimed at older collectors, not kids. The same could be said of the Opening Day cards. Glow-in-the-dark gimmicks aside, the look of the Opening Day cards is classic, emphasizing the image and not the print. A quick spin through the Internet revealed that the hobby appears to have gone the way of comic books, appealing primarily to longtime customers rather than trying to make new ones. And those longtime customers seem picky about what they expect the big card companies to do.
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For example, while reading up on these new sets, I discovered that Upper Deck is planning to bring out ��HD video trading cards�� in the fall, featuring one full minute of highlights of select NFL players. My first reaction? ��Wow, that��s pretty cool. I bet my kids would dig those.�� Then I scrolled down to the comment section and read the cards described as, ��hideous,�� ��dumb,�� ��crap,�� ��garbage,�� and ��ridiculous.�� ��Can we PLEASE not categorize this as a trading card?�� one collector pleaded, while another wrote, ��No one in their right mind is going to buy these… fortunately for them, their target audience is little kids and sports fans, two groups of people I don��t consider ��in their right minds.���� (Because the last thing a sports memorabilia company should do is sell their product to children and fans, right?)
I could be misreading the situation, of course. Surely there are more good-natured and enthusiastic collectors out there than snobby ones. And as a casual buyer, I have to admit that I��m glad that there are ties to history built into the current product lines, designed to appeal to hopeless nostalgists like myself.
Still, of all the cards I looked at in my packs and online, I was most heartened by those in the ��Topps Attax�� line, which are designed to be used in a collectible card game. Even though that product is clearly designed to capitalize on one of the biggest recent pieces of the trading card market, I like it for being targeted to the young. Because if I had it to do over again, I��d have never sold my collection when I was a teenager, and I would��ve never encased the cards in plastic before that. I would��ve kept them all in a shoebox and played with them on the floor, and then when I got too old for that, I would��ve stashed them away and passed them on to my kids to do the same.
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Also, I would��ve never chewed the gum. But that��s a whole other subject.<|endoftext|>by
Is nomenclature important? Sure, as the ��language�� of chemistry we really cannot do without it, and it��s also true that you��d better not mix up your sodium chloride with your sodium chlorate, but the truth is that it��s probably at lot less important in terms of teaching at the high school and college level than you think it is.
I recently saw this question on Twitter, posed by Derek Shackleford.
My blog posts are generally precipitated by a single thing (in this case Derek��s Tweets), but underlying them is often a much deeper thought process that simply reaches critical mass via that single thing. Anyway, suffice to say that nomenclature (in particular organic nomenclature), has been