Dodgers FanFest 2013

Dodgers FanFest was insanity.  I want to start off by thanking my fellow Dodgers-blogging friends.  I do not think I could have lasted the day without them.  Pretty much the entirety of the event was spent standing and waiting in some sort of line.  I had fun, though.  Perhaps more so than mutual interests, mutual commiseration and suffering tends to build bonds.  I like that I finally got to meet several of my fellow bloggers, of whom I have only known by name and reputation for a few years until yesterday.  I will use the photos I took to help tell the tale of FanFest:

I arrived at Dodger Stadium around 10 AM.  You can see some of the outfield construction and remodeling here.

The line to get wristbands (!) for autographs did not seem too bad from this point.  But, then I crossed the ridge and saw that the line seemed to have no end.  Spiegel of Nomo's Sushi Platter fame met up with me around 10:20ish AM.  Spiegel and I had drawn up a cursory plan to get autographs from Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu.  The plan was doomed to fail from the start.  The autograph line must have been at least a mile long because it wound, folded, and curved on itself.  I thought that there must have been at least ten thousand people there, though Dylan Hernandez said that the Dodgers thought the number was closer to 21,000.  After about an hour of waiting in line and shooting the shit, Greg of Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle fame met up with Spiegel and yours truly.

This was where we were a little more than an hour and a half into our riveting line-standing.  It was almost noon.

At some point during our wait in line, Josh Dodgerbobble, Stealing Home and his son met up with the three of us.  Dodgerbobble managed to score himself a Magic Johnson autographed baseball, the lucky duck.  We all traded a few cards and chatted for a while.  Dodgerbobble and Stealing Home left early.  We finally got to the wristband tent some time between 1:30-2:00 PM.  That was a three hour line!  Spiegel, Zakwin, and I each got our one autograph wristband for Hyun-Jin Ryu and proceeded into FanFest.  It wasn't necessarily better inside the event area than what was outside.

On stage right is Matt Kemp playing at DJ'ing and on stage left is Nancy Bea.  As you can see, it was super crowded inside FanFest.  This was the view from where we were standing in line to get Ryu's signature.

More after the jump...

Sponsored box breaks: 2012 Leaf Memories Baseball

I also filmed an Atlanta Sports Cards-sponsored two-box break of 2012 Leaf Memories Baseball, in addition to the break I did for 2012 Leaf Inscriptions in my previous post.  This mid high-end product was fun to open because it was a bit nostalgic, as I owned several of the 1990 Leaf cards when I was younger.  Those old cards were probably thrown away or sold in garage sales at various points in my life.  Wouldn't it be wild if some of your old Leaf cards made it in as buybacks in Leaf Memories?  Here's the video:

I would say Leaf Memories is medium-risk, medium-reward in general.  But, as you can see, I did pretty well for myself!  I probably pulled the most short-printed checklist card ever.  I am not sure what other collectors think about Leaf's recent releases, but I've really enjoyed what they have put out in the past 2-3 years.  There are way too many Pete Rose signatures and products out there right now though.  That dude is signing anything and everything.

My video box breaks for 2012 Leaf Inscriptions and 2012 Leaf Memories Baseball also made it on to Atlanta Sports Cards' blog.  Awesome!  Now if I can figure out how to make my Flip HD camera stay in focus better...