The Last Minute Group Break (Part 1: Rockies)

Way back in June, Chris of Nachos Grande, easily one of the most active and prolific bloggers in our community, ran another one of his group breaks. I've taken part before, but I had considered sitting this one out. He had fifteen slots open, good for one selected team and one random bonus team. Based on the products in this break, I didn't really mind if I missed out, and I figured that was fairly likely given he only had to convince fifteen collectors.

On offer this time around was 2017 Topps Archives, 2017 Topps Bunt, and 2017 Diamond Kings, along with his usual smattering of bonuses. Other than Archives, I wasn't entirely wowed by the products in the break. But the slots didn't fill up like I expected, and I decided to jump in to beat the buzzer. And even though we had just done a trade, I know his bonuses and throw-ins are always worthwhile.

Of course, I picked the Rockies, but by chance, I also ended up with the Diamondbacks. We'll be seeing that matchup on TBS in the NL Wild Card Game just hours from now, so this seemed like a perfect time to finally dig into the results of the break.

2017 Diamond Kings #105 Charlie Blackmon SP

I don't know much about Diamond Kings, and if Chris hadn't helpfully put this in a penny sleeve and written "Short Print" on it in black Sharpie, I wouldn't have had any idea. It's about what you'd expect, though perhaps with a bit more of a watercolor look than in past years. That red splotch toward the bottom is actually a distorted Cardinals batboy, as we can see on the back. A zoomed-out version of the artwork without the watercolor theme is found on the back, making it easy to see what's what. Panini put an elaborate frame around that image, just like what you'd see in an art museum.

And all that before I really noticed that there was no logo on Blackmon's helmet. Maybe they actually kind of know what they're doing.

2017 Diamond Kings Aurora #A-18 Nolan Arenado

This loud Arenado card is an insert from the Aurora set, no relation to the old Pacific brand. If you turn it sideways, it could be a national flag of a similarly colorful country, somewhere in the Caribbean perhaps. Panini also threw in a little gold foil to go along with the familiar playing-card surface. It really is quite different. I think Donruss was trying for something like this with some of their early-90s designs, but the execution is really quite good here.

Arenado fell a little short of the 40-homer mark this card praised him for reaching in back-to-back seasons, but he still hit the 130-RBI mark for the third straight year, something only a handful of Hall of Fame-caliber players have done. Giancarlo Stanton put two more across than Nolan did in 2017, preventing Arenado from being the first to lead the league in three straight seasons while also getting to the 130-RBI mark. But he's still a record setter and could very well earn his fifth straight Gold Glove.

2017 Topps Archives #256 Ian Desmond

This might be my first card of Ian Desmond as a Rockie. He missed about half of the team's games this year due to injury, but has still made an impact in Denver. And he picked up where Brandon Barnes left off on the tattoo front. Part of the Rockies' stacked-as-usual outfield, Desmond is shown at the plate, with his bat extending past the border of the 1992 Topps design, one that somehow doesn't "feel" like an Archives card. The card stock is definitely a little different in Archives this year.

1992 Topps was the first flagship set to be printed on white card stock, a major change that not everyone thinks should have been made. But it did allow Topps to reliably print photographs on the back, and 1992 gave us those very thin panorama shots of the team's home stadium. Coors Field had barely broken ground in 1992, and the Rockies and Marlins had yet to play a game. So this marks one of the few appearances of Coors Field in in the stretched 1992 format on the back, and while Topps did a pretty good job capturing the sold-out park, none of the iconic scoreboard in left field made it on, nor any of the picturesque sky behind it. That scoreboard, by the way, will undergo extensive renovations this winter, to go along with the popular Rooftop patio in right-center.

Now that I think about it, less than ten parks that made an appearance on the back of 1992 Topps are still around. Not even Camden Yards, which kicked off the flurry of retro-style ballparks around the league, made it on. There have been four new teams since 1992, but over twenty new stadiums. And the Braves have gone through two! It'll be interesting to see 2041's Topps Heritage set, and what the stadium situation looks like then.

2017 Topps Archives Peach #37 Jon Gray /199

Jon Gray, the probable starter for tonight's Wild Card game, was one of my hits in this break. This salmon-bordered parallel (Topps calls it Peach) of the 1960 design is numbered to just 199 copies, and Chris managed to pull one just like it of David Dahl on my behalf. Those pulls are the highlights of the break for me, at least as far as odds go.

The card back, complete with cartoon, contains the serial number, orange and black printing, and and some season highlights, including his magnificent 16-strikeout game on September 17th, 2016.

Here's hoping his performance tonight is closer to that and less like the first-inning jitters he's sometimes known for.

2017 Topps Archives '16 Retro Original #RO-19 Nolan Arenado

I got a insert card or two, and this one of Nolan is termed a "Retro Original". Sort of like all these ballparks we have now. It's vaguely reminiscent of a few different Topps designs cobbled together, such as 1986 and 1959 on the front, and maybe a bit of 1977 on the back with all that green. It even reminds me of the 2017 Allen & Ginter set, though a bit more 1960s and less late-19th century. I didn't even notice the facsimile signature, a longtime Topps fixture, until several looks at the card.

2017 Topps Archives #136 Rob Manfred

The final design used in 2017 Archives was 1982's "Hockey Sticks" design, and Chris decided I was worthy of getting a couple of MLB Commissioner cards. This one, of course, and also Bart Giamatti's card from 1990 Donruss.

Current Commissioner Rob Manfred seems open to bringing MLB further into the future, hinting that he's open to expansion, pushing for extended netting after a recent incident at Yankee Stadium, and is heavily concerned with the speed of games, introducing the rather silly intentional walk rule, despite still letting the Yankees play the Red Sox in their regular Sunday night 4-hour marathons.

Nick wrote all about this card last week, and I think that Archives as a set is obscure enough to let the Commissioner slip in. If anything, it marks that Major League Baseball is in a period of change, and it serves as a reminder that the league is, first and foremost, a business.

2017 Topps Bunt #132 Carlos Gonzalez

I've seen a few arrive via trade, but the value pack I purchased at Target was devoid of Rockies. I probably got the whole team set thanks to this break, and the print quality on these cards is ridiculously sharp. For a bargain product, I'm certainly impressed. I guess I didn't really notice until I saw this side-by-side with 2016 Bunt, from which Chris threw in a couple extras. I'd say it's pretty much on par with a Topps Now card, and the color coding with these Rockies is just gorgeous!

I guess the only critique I have is that the back could be jazzed up a bit, but if you don't want to spend big on Topps products, it's a solid offering.

That about does it for the official group break items, but anyone who's taken part in his breaks knows that there's plenty more where that came from.

2004 Topps Total Production #TP8 Todd Helton

I always liked the idea of Topps Total, but I never really got into it. During the few years this set existed, I wasn't buying a whole lot of new product. Mainly I was trying to decipher the fallout from the craziness that was the late-'90s. Shiny and Topps Total definitely occupy different compartments in my collecting mind, but here's an insert that checks both boxes. I had no idea. it's faint, much more so than 1998 Pacific Omega Online, but the background design is definitely going for a printed circuit board look.

Interestingly, the card back mentions Helton's OPS, which is helpfully defined as on-base plus slugging. It was just a couple years after the A's Moneyball season and the sudden adoption of Sabermetrics, and this is the earliest Topps card I've seen that mentions one of the new statistical categories. Helton had a significant falloff later in his career, but at the time, his career OPS trailed only Ruth, Williams, and Gehrig, according to the card.

1994 SP #169 Walt Weiss

It seems like every time I buy into one of Chris's group breaks, I end up with some 1994 SP. The shiny copper gets me every time, and I can't get enough of that gold hologram. I don't know where he gets them all, but I'll take it.

Walt Weiss certainly looked a lot younger in his playing days, compared to his recent managerial stint with the Rockies. The photo on the back shows Weiss flashing the sign of the horns, indicating to his outfielders that there are two outs. Just like I did in little league! "Infield, tell the outfield!", our coach would say. And I was usually in the outfield, except during the minimum of two innings when each kid had to play an infield position.

On the front, Weiss is in Mile High Stadium, with what looks like the Braves logo displayed on the outfield wall (it's tough to tell on the scan), back when teams all over the league had logos of their competitors plastered all over the place.

This might have been pretty early in the 1994 season, maybe even before the Rockies got their first win against the Braves, their old division nemesis. Yes, the Braves used to be in the NL West, and I had always assumed that was because they used to be based in Milwaukee but never had a chance to be realigned until the six-division system was created. But no, the Braves were already in Atlanta by the time East and West divisions were created, meaning they had almost a solid quarter-century of schlepping out to California from Atlanta on a regular basis.

And I thought the Astros in the AL West was questionable.

Maybe that's why it took me so long to figure that one out. Houston's definitely not in the West. At least not like Seattle is.

2012 Bowman Chrome Draft Draft Picks #BDPP113 Scott Oberg

Bowman Chrome isn't quite as shiny as that copper masterpiece, but this card is notable for a different reason. The subject, Scott Oberg, is actually a Major Leaguer, which is rather unusual for a Bowman card. The reliever appeared in a whopping 66 games this season, and got the Rockies out of a few dicey situations.

Not bad for a 15th-round pick from UConn.

2012 Topps Update #US123 Jamie Moyer

Unlike his uniform number, Jamie Moyer wasn't quite 50 when he won on April 17th, 2012, becoming the oldest player to ever earn a Win in the Major Leagues. He even broke his own record about a month later, just a couple days before turning 49 1/2. Both wins came in divisional games at Coors Field, and he had a way better final season than Roy Oswalt.

Rockies are rarely featured on the checklist cards. Helton's retirement got a card in 2014, but that's the only other one that comes to mind. But unlike Helton's checklist, Moyer's card is properly color-coded to fit in with the rest of his teammates. And this is not quite a meta-checklist, where the card's number appears on the card itself, but Jamie Moyer's actual card number shows up about halfway down the third column.

2001 Upper Deck #261 Ben Petrick

Ben Petrick got a card in 2001 Upper Deck, striking a similar pose to Ian Desmond's follow-through. He's swinging a big bat, and there was a ton of white space on the vertical back of the card, plenty of room to fill with a long career. However, as we know now, it was not to be. Unbeknownst to the Rockies, he was battling Parkinson's disease from the young age of 22. That he was able to put together a Major League career of any length while contending with that is amazing enough, let alone five seasons at the grueling position of catcher.

And I still remember him as "the guy whose autograph I almost got."

2000 Fleer Tradition #35 Pedro Astacio

Even though he's in the career top ten in most Rockies pitching categories, I don't find too many Pedro Astacio cards. He's in the top three for strikeouts, and is at the very top for complete games and strikeout-to-walk ratio, but on the other hand, no Rockie has ever hit more batters or allowed more home runs.

Also, in looking over those stats, I noticed that late reliever and occasional closer Steve Reed was finally knocked off his perch on the Rockies top-ten list for Wins. Tyler Chatwood earned his 34th win in mid-September, ending one of the more astonishing statistical oddities out of the Rockies bullpen.

The blue background on his 2000 Fleer Tradition card is probably better-suited to his Dodger days, so it's maybe not the best selection to debut him on the blog. I'll keep an eye out for another card, perhaps one that better shows him in action. Or at least one with more purple.

1997 Collector's Choice Teams #CR11 Ellis Burks

At first, I assumed this was a duplicate, but in looking a bit more closely, it's actually from a team set that Collector's Choice put out in 1997. Only ten teams got that treatment, obviously including the Rockies. For some reason, the Rockies seem to be pretty well-represented in this type of offering, including both years of Topps Team Stadium Club. But I've never seen a Topps buyback card.

The "Did You Know?" fact on the back is about Eric Young and the four times he's led off a game with a home run, which was then a Rockies record. I don't know for certain, but I feel confident that Charlie Blackmon had to have passed that record by now, if for no other reason than he set the all-time record for RBIs as a leadoff hitter this season, with 103.

2014 Topps Heritage #404 Charlie Blackmon

Speaking of Charlie Blackmon, when was the last time you saw him without his trademark beard? Well, other than his rookie card from 2011 Topps Update, one you may have run across in search of Mike Trout's from the same set? 2014 was his breakout year, the same year as this 1965-themed Heritage set. I saw his 6-for-6 game on Opening Day 2014, which was also the first day The Rooftop was open at Coors Field. He's only gotten better since then, helping put the Rockies in the playoffs for the first time in eight years, and making a pretty strong case for the NL MVP award.

2009 Upper Deck #621 Chris Iannetta

2009 Upper Deck was one of Chris's bonus products in the group break. Catcher Chris Iannetta fell out of one of those packs, who was a Rockie from 2006 to 2011, a timeframe that spanned both their last two Postseason appearances, but Iannetta didn't have a Postseason appearance in either year.

That does not leave me with a good feeling. I feel like that may come back to haunt the Rockies, because Iannetta is now a Diamondback, after finally getting a taste of October baseball in 2014 with the Angels.

Or maybe it will be Daniel Descalso, or Jorge De La Rosa.

The Rockies and Diamondbacks seem inextricably linked. The two teams even share a spring training facility. And they've swapped a lot of players over the years. Gerardo Parra or could just as easily sink the D-backs tonight. Or Mark Reynolds.

After being swept in the 2007 NLCS by the Rockies, I'm sure the Diamondbacks can't wait to take the field to try to get their revenge. They'll have their ace on the mound, as will the Rockies.

I can't wait!