The Trading Post #121: A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts

Back in 2015, when it was unthinkable for the Rockies to be in a tie for first place at any point after April, I ran a contest for my 100th post. I was blogging much more consistently then, not squeezing in a single post at the end of the month like I've been doing all summer long. The winner of that contest was Jon, the writer of A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts. Not long after, he sent a return package, #49 in The Trading Post series.

That history between Jon's blog and mine takes us up to about March of this year, when I spotted my ZIP code (yes, technically that's an acronym) on an outgoing mail post of his.

Yes, March. Meaning this group of beautiful, shiny Rockies cards has been sitting in the lower left area of my side table since the early days of Spring Training. And in case you were wondering, most of them came in penny sleeves. But better late than never, the saying goes, so let's see what Rockies history we can unearth today.

1999 Bowman Chrome Refractors #22 Vinny Castilla

1999 Bowman was well-known for including facsimile signatures in a prominent vertical banner on the right. Rather than an illegible signature, Vinny Castilla's card has his full, printed name of "Vinicio Castilla Soria", with the same large dots over the "I"s that can be found on his 1993 Studio card. Owing to his Hispanic heritage and Mexican nationality, you might notice that his full name includes his second last name, properly an apellido materno, his mother's maiden name. This practice is generally quashed down in English-speaking countries where First Name, Last Name is the law of the land, but dropping that final piece hides an integral part of one's identity that many Hispanic cultures honor and acknowledge much more than we do here.

Credit card issuers in Latin America must have another way to verify who you are when you call customer service, which is good, because your mother's maiden name (or any static identifier) is a truly awful way to authenticate someone. But I digress. All I know is that if I were a Hispanic player, I wouldn't stop at making sure accent marks were on my jersey.

Another thing I noticed on this shiny Bowman refractor applies to all the non-prospect (i.e. red) cards that year, a pair of "Now & Then" photos on the card back. Castilla's then-current photo was displayed on the top, with a very slightly smaller shot of him as a young player in the Braves organization on the bottom. 1999 Bowman remains one of the few Bowman sets I can recognize and assign to the right year, but even it still has surprises.

2013 Bowman Platinum Cutting Edge Stars #CES-DD David Dahl

Less rectangular but no less shiny is this die-cut card of David Dahl. The recent re-signing of Matt Holliday might limit Dahl's playing time more than he'd like, but they're both hitting key home runs for the Rockies at an important time in the pennant race. This Cutting Edge (get it?) card dates back to 2013, not long after the Rockies drafted him, but still many years before his first MLB appearance in 2016. He's just 24, but he's taken a bit longer to develop than some of his contemporaries, like, say, Andrew Benintendi.

He still has plenty of time to hone his craft. After all, his nickname on his Players' Weekend jersey is "Baby Dahl". And think of how long it took Topps to get this good at die-cuts.

2015 Bowman Chrome Bowman Scouts Update #BSU-RT Raimel Tapia

With all that depth in the outfield right now, both old and new, there's simply no room for Raimel Tapia. But even if you don't have a roster spot, everyone has a shiny card. This particular card is from the same set (well, the Update checklist) as a Jon Gray card I received from Bob Walk The Plank over three years ago. Fans of things like chain-link fences and fans in pink shirts consuming ballpark snacks ought not to miss Bowman cards. Minor league games are far from a national spectacle, and the venues still allow for gems like these.

Tapia has just a handful fewer games in the big leagues than Dahl, but he did beat Topps' prediction of a 2017 debut by a year. We're less than a week away from September call-ups, so Tapia will likely get a few more games in this year, as will Garrett Hampson, the player who was sent down to make way for Matt Holliday.

2008 Topps Chrome Trading Card History #TCHC50 Brad Hawpe

There were no cards of Matt Holliday in this trade package, but one of his outfield mates, Brad Hawpe, did make it in. The 2009 All-Star made it into 2008's Topps Chrome Trading Card History set, the final card in the 50-card set. The set had a larger, non-shiny counterpart in Topps base that year at 75 cards. He's pictured (literally, just pictured) on the 1953 Bowman design. Most of the chrome in that decade ended up on grilles and tailfins of Buicks and Mercurys, not on baseball cards. Times have certainly changed. We still love shiny stuff, but our preferences about which products contain it have dramatically shifted.

1999 Topps Chrome Refractors #144 Jeff Reed

Not many collectors liked Topps' experiment with non-white borders between 1998 and 2003. 1998 and 1999 used a gold border that wasn't well received, but both Opening Day and Chrome used silver borders in 1999. It does seem to work a little better, especially with that little "Refractor" word underneath the card number on the back.

Topps gave us a great action shot on this one, picturing Jeff Reed throwing down to second with his full gear on. When I first started watching baseball, I seem to remember catchers rapidly removing their masks before trying to nail a would-be base stealer, but there's no time for that anymore. On the other hand, the veteran catcher might have just been making a practice throw before the start of an inning. He's occupying a lot of real estate without a batter or umpire in the frame, and the Met in the background seems to be casually preparing to begin an at-bat at Shea Stadium. I'm not quite sure who that is, but the uniform number looks like a "5" to me. John Olerud wore #5 for the Mets, so that's my best guess for this cameo.

There's a Cincinnati Red on the back, making this a rare double-cameo card. There are no identifying marks on that Reds jersey, so I'll guess Sean Casey and leave it at that.

1995 Score Gold Rush #228 Mike Munoz

There have been a lot of players who have worn the Rockies uniform over the years, but it's rare for a player to make a first appearance on this blog after a couple hundred posts and at least a thousand or so cards. Mike Munoz, an inaugural-year Rockie, is just now debuting on Infield Fly Rule. In fact, Jeff Reed appeared only once before, and then as an Expo.

Mike Munoz is a name I remember well. He appeared in a whopping 300 games as a Rockie, always in relief. In baseball slang, he was the LOOGY (Left-handed One Out Guy), but he earned a 15-14 record in his Rockie career, and even was credited with a handful of saves. Score, in one their legendary write-ups, identified him as "A durable southpaw relief specialist" on this Gold Rush parallel.

In retrospect, I don't think I realized how much I liked Score until recently. It was an inexpensive brand, they gave us plenty of reading material with those epic paragraphs (many of which I've never read and have no idea what gems are waiting to be uncovered), and the designs are just, well, fun. Plus they gave us cards of guys like Mike Munoz.

2016 Topps Museum Collection #43 Nolan Arenado

We finally depart the realm of the shiny (cue mental image of the magic wormhole to Asgard), but not before passing through the luxury section with a look at Topps Museum Collection. The photo from this card would be from 2015, and the excellent photo reproduction in this set makes the old shade of purple noticeably different and more blue. Even the bat looks a little bit blue. Compare that with a Corey Dickerson card that came from A Cracked Bat, and the shade looks a bit different.

It's nice to have a couple cards from Museum Collection without having to pay the crazy prices associated with that product. That's one of the reasons I liked Score.

2008 Upper Deck First Edition #206 Kazuo Matsui

Kazuo Matsui, another rarely-seen Rockie, got a card in 2008 Upper Deck First Edition, basically UD's foil-free Opening Day equivalent. The card tells us about Matsui's 32 stolen bases in 2007, as well as his two-hit performance in the epic Game 163 against the Padres in October 2007.

That was a long time ago, but in some ways not a lot has changed. Matt Holliday is still not a great outfielder, but is good enough at the plate to make up for it. Chris Iannetta is still around, and they're both once again on the Rockies roster. Double-digit scores are still common at Coors Field, and you're likely to see a passing thundercloud on a late-summer afternoon in Denver, though the level of wildfire smoke obscuring the mountains has increased alarmingly.

I'll never turn down a Coors Field card, especially one showing the out-of-town scoreboard. Usually there's enough to date the card to a specific game, but not quite exactly on this one. All we know is that the Pirates were hosting the Dodgers, which would put this at some point between June 1st-3rd, 2007, when the Reds came to visit Denver.

2003 Fleer Ultra Photo Effex #17 Todd Helton

Fleer likes their plain white backgrounds, don't they? New to me is 2003 Fleer Ultra Photo Effex, where they've applied a rotoscope effect to a photo of Todd Helton. If you've ever seen A Scanner Darkly or Waking Life by Richard Linklater, you'll know what I mean. The large white area at the bottom is clearly meant to make this look like a Polaroid, and they even use a rougher matte finish in the frame area. It's a clever design, if a bit simple.

I'm curious whether any other players in this set got a different photo effect applied to their images, a la Instagram, or if they did this rotoscope look for all twenty cards. 2003 Fleer Ultra isn't exactly flying off the shelves these days, so I'll have to keep a sharp eye out.

2014 Topps Rookie Cup All Stars Commemorative #RCAS-15 Troy Tulowitzki /99

The last card for today is another member of that magical 2007 team, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. It's a manufactured relic of the Topps Rookie Cup, which was awarded to Tulo on his 2008 card, and this is by far the thickest card I own. It's almost comically so, thicker than the entire stack of cards above, and even thicker than my iPhone 6.

There's a nice serial number on there, just 99 copies, and the card tells us lots about Tulo's rookie year in 2007. There were plenty of defensive gems, an unassisted triple play, and more home runs as an NL rookie shortstop than Ernie Banks, a record that would stand until Tulo's replacement, Trevor Story, came up about a decade later.

I hope to get back into the swing of things with trade posts, because I certainly have plenty waiting for me. There are lots of cards left to be blogged about and filed away, though none as thick as this one.

Thanks to Jon for sending a few that fit my collection (but not my toploaders) perfectly!