No Frankincense, No Myrrh, Plenty of Gold

If there's one thing I can count on, it's my mother gifting cards from my Eight Men Out list at holiday time. I'm pretty sure she orders most of these from Burbank Sportscards on eBay, and this year, she gave me a couple of golden beauties.

1996 Leaf All-Star Game MVP Contenders Gold #9 Dante Bichette /5000

Redemptions are something I've only done a couple times in my collecting career. That will be a post someday, but they're not impossible to find outside the redemption window. Take this card from 1996 Leaf. The silver foil base version was sent by Tom of Waiting 'Til Next Year, a prominent figure in the Cardsphere when Card of the Year time rolls around. He inspired my last post, and educated me on the existence of this insert set over two years ago.

Here's how it works: The 20-card insert set featured players whom Leaf expected to be potential MVP candidates in the 1996 All-Star Game. If the player on your card won that award, you could redeem it for the full 20-card insert set, only this time with gold foil instead of silver. Dante Bichette didn't win the MVP; that was Mike Piazza. So the silver version of my card didn't gain any extra intrinsic value for about a month in summer 1996. I was away at Boy Scout camp anyway. Presumably, the Mike Piazza silver cards are much more scarce than any of the other nineteen players in the set, as at least 5,000 examples were taken off the market and hole-punched.

Even though he didn't win the All-Star Game MVP in 1996, Bichette that year became the first Rockie to make it onto the starting lineup of an All Star Game based on fan voting. Vinny Castilla technically holds the record for first Rockies All-Star starter, but he was elected as a reserve and only got the starting call a year prior due to a Matt Williams injury.

Anyway, August 15th, 1996 has long since passed, so the redemption window closed decades ago. But the gold sets are still out there, and while I do feel a little bad about breaking up the set, I'm glad to have both versions of this card in my collection. They look great side-by-side, although I can't help feeling that those little black notches on the right should be die-cut.

1993 Topps Gold #824 Russ McGinnis

The other card is from 1993 Topps Gold, one of six that were only produced in the Gold variety, replacing the six checklist cards normally found in the base set. Two of them were sent by gcrl a couple years ago, I unearthed one in my collecting days as a child, and I just found another in my 1993 binder. That only leaves one more to have the full run from 1993, cards which allowed die-hard collectors to learn about six more players than they otherwise would have.

Speaking of that, what do we know about Russ McGinnis? This is one of just two major-release cards he has. Other than this and 1992 Donruss Rookies, his only cards are from various oddball and minor league sets. The only thing this card tells us is that he was signed to the Brewers organization by scout Paul Tretiak, who played in the Yankees farm system in the late 1940s, just a couple years before Mickey Mantle arrived in Independence, Kan. and Joplin, Mo.

McGinnis himself had two brief stints in the Majors. He played fourteen games for the Rangers in 1992, and then three more for the Royals in 1995. He only got on base a handful of times, and since he's wearing a road jersey here, odds are that this photo was taken in Anaheim in a game against the California Angels. It could be a spring training shot, but I'd hope that one of his very few cards actually shows a Major League appearance.

The last one I need from this checklist replacement series is on the Eight Men Out list now, before I turn my gaze toward similar cards in 1992 and 1994 Topps.

Thanks, Mom!