The Trading Post #102: The Collector

It's always a bittersweet day, the last day of the regular season. 162 games throughout the spring, summer, and fall, with few days off. And more often than not, unless you're the Yankees, that's the end. Time to pack your bags and wait for spring.

But not this year.

This year, the Rockies are heading to the Postseason for just the fourth time. They've still never won the NL West, but the existence of the Wild Card has given us Coloradans a few tastes of October baseball, or as we like to call it in these parts, Rocktober.

1994 Flair #372 Marvin Freeman

A bespectacled Marvin Freeman was a member of the Rockies when they first made the playoffs in 1995, but he had elbow surgery right after the season ended, so he missed their first Wild Card appearance against the Braves, his former team. He still made his mark on the Rockies, starting the game the first time the Rockies pitched a combined shutout at Coors Field (I think my dad was there that day), and he remains atop the single-season leaderboard for ERA, with 2.80.

As usual with 1994 Flair, there's gold foil for days, and it'll go really nicely with that Frank Thomas card my mom picked out. And it was part of a stack of 50 cards that Chris from The Collector sent as part of a 50/50 swap offer he made in mid-August. He already got my half of the trade, and this is the second time he's sent me cards.

I know Jaybee's blogroll is dwindling a bit, but it's nice to see newcomers keeping our community fresh.

1998 Topps Chrome #310 Ellis Burks

New shiny cards also keep my collection fresh, and I got a nice, flat, Chrome card of Ellis Burks. Burks, an ex-Red Sock, made up a pretty large portion of what I sent Chris, as he lists "former Red Sox" on his wantlist. My duplcates box is running a bit thin these days, so other than a few recent cards, former Bostonians who later suited up for the Rockies is about all I could find.

In my opinion, 1998 Topps looks way better in this shiny silver than the gold border and foil the normal cards had that year. It's not quite as imposing as the oversized Super Chrome cards Topps released in '98, but it shows Burks rounding the bases after hitting one out at Candlestick Park, with a dejected Giants infielder returning to his spot on the diamond. That makes me think this might be a late-September game, because the Rockies regularly heated up in September, regardless of where they were in the standings, and beat up on the Giants to spoil their playoff hopes as the season drew to a close.

I'm telling you, you can set your watch to the cycle of a Rockies season.

1997 Finest #28 Jamey Wright B

Jamey Wright, despite pitching six seasons for the Rockies over two stints, has only appeared on this blog once before. That card came from Cards from the Quarry, who has since dropped from the active blogroll, leaving just Rosenort and me to cover our region of the NL West.

Wright's second appearance comes on an unpeeled Finest card from 1997, part of a stack of pristine cards from the same set. I'll get to peeling right after I publish this. It's what I do. Nick liberates graded cards from their plastic enclosures, I peel shiny cards.

The back of this card, clearly not important enough to ship with a protective coating, talks about Wright's ability to generate ground ball outs. Even after just a couple years of Coors Field's existence, it was obvious that fly-ball pitchers were going to have trouble. That's partly what's made Jon Gray so successful, and he's who the Rockies will send to the mound on Wednesday for the Wild Card game in Phoenix to face Zack Greinke.

2002 Topps Ten #84 Todd Helton RUNS

After having never seeing the Topps Ten set before, it's shown up in two consecutive trades. Helton made it further up the Runs leaderboard than Pierre climbed the Triples list, just one run behind Alex Rodriguez, but still a dozen behind Slammin' Sammy Sosa, who hit a not-league-leading 64 in 2001.

Science nerds among you may have heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, where you stumble across a particular thing or fact, then you suddenly start seeing it everywhere. That's not exactly what's going on here, as I truly never had this set in my collection before, but it's oddly coincidental that a set from 2002 just started appearing repeatedly with no warning.

2008 Upper Deck Timeline #24 Matt Holliday

Helton and Matt Holliday were both part of the Rockies when they made their magical run to the World Series in 2007, and Helton was still around the next time in 2009. Those two and Troy Tulowitzki were the faces of the Rockies the last time the Postseason came to Denver.

Thanks to that playoff run, the Rockies got a lot of cards in 2008. Upper Deck did an especially good job, slotting Matt Holliday into the one-hit-wonder UD Timeline set. Holliday led the NL in RBIs in 2007, and also won the batting title, an award the Rockies have practically monopolized ever since they became a franchise. None other than Charlie Blackmon will walk away with that award in 2017, just a year after DJ LeMahieu edged out Daniel Murphy.

This card makes no mention of his NLCS MVP award, but does mention a 17-game hitting streak he put together in August 2007. I also see quite a few similarities on the card back to UD Masterpieces, just a bit more modern-looking.

2015 Topps Triple Threads #36 Carlos Gonzalez

Besides a couple guys from the broadcast crew, only Carlos Gonzalez remains with the team from their previous Postseason appearance. Matt Holliday, Ubaldo Jimenez, and a few others are still in the league, but the rest of the roster will be experiencing Rocktober for the first time as players.

This ultra-fancy and ultra-thick Topps Triple Threads card made me laugh just a bit when they tied his "CarGo" nickname to something that could also describe his flashy Lamborghini. It's a cute pun, but perhaps something better suited to Bunt or an Opening Day insert set than something like Triple Threads.

By the way, Topps, you can have that idea of a "Players and their cars" insert set. I'd collect the heck out of that one.

2017 Topps Heritage #258 David Dahl / Raimel Tapia (RC)

For the most part, this post has looked back at past Rockies glory, but guys like this could play a huge role in helping the Rockies to success in future years. Most of the pieces were there last year, but it took a new manager and a beefed-up bullpen to finally crack the secret to success and the third-best record in team history. Dropping two out of three to the Dodgers this weekend doesn't bode well for the NLDS if they win the Wild Card game, but they did give a lot of playing time to the young guys on Sunday.

It's hard to see a Rookie Stars two-player card on the 1968 burlap design without thinking of the famed Nolan Ryan / Jerry Koosman rookie card. Both Dahl and Tapia got semi-regular playing time this season, and while they're not necessarily known to casual fans yet, they'll ensure the Rockies will have a strong outfield for years to come.

2016 Topps #661B DJ LeMahieu SP (42 Jersey)

Finally, last year's batting champion appears facing the Giants yet again, although this short-print was taken on Jackie Robinson Day in 2015. Candlestick Park was no more, instead taking place in AT&T Park right on the bay. The Rockies won that contest by an appropriate score of 4-2, and while its a bit tricky to tell who's who when everyone wears the same uniform number, the label on the runner's batting helmet gives him away as Angel Pagan. That's enough information to pinpoint this play to the bottom of the 6th, when Buster Posey grounded into a 5-4-3 double play.

I almost never deliberately chase short-prints, but I'm happy when I happen to run across one. Thanks to Chris and this 50/50 swap, I found one that is specific enough to find the actual play. I didn't even have to shell out for a $10 Topps Now card to do that, but I hope there are several more of those to come in the upcoming Postseason.

Mom Goes to the Card Show

While I was busy digging through the vintage bin, my mom, who accompanied me to this particular card show earlier this year, surreptitiously took a stab at selecting a few singles for me. I know she reads my blog, and by now she surely has a pretty good idea of what would fit in my collection. The surprise stack of cards that were wrapped for my birthday alongside the vintage beauties I picked out really hit the mark. Just see for yourself.

2002 Topps All-World Team #AW-5 Larry Walker

Larry Walker is one of the best to ever wear a Rockies uniform, thanks to his MVP and near-Triple Crown season in 1997, a slew of batting titles, and even a few Gold Gloves. This card, however, highlights that performance not as a Rockie, but as a Canadian. Topps' All-World Team insert set from 2002 contains 25 players from all around the globe. The USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, Venezuela, Panama, and plenty more. Larry Walker holds the career record among Canadians for Home Runs, RBIs, and more, but fellow Canuck Joey Votto is making his mark and keeps getting mentioned as the best player not named Mike Trout.

In case you were wondering, yes, this surprisingly thick card mentions hockey. It also has lots of gold foil all over the front, about what you'd expect for an early-millennium insert card. Topps used an all-caps font on the back that is slightly difficult to read, but the world maps found in the background and in the globe are rather interesting. The globe primarily shows the Indian Ocean, flanked by Africa and the Arabian Peninsula on the left...er, West side of the card, and bits of Australia and Southeast Asia to the East. The background shows quite a bit more, and you can tell they're using the projection that makes Greenland and the Arctic areas of Canada look about as big as Africa.

2014 Topps Museum Collection Momentous Material Jumbo Relics #MMJR-CA Chris Archer /50 (MEM)

Following that, we have the Mercator projection example of a relic card. I promise I won't get further into cartography here, but this this is huge. Frankly, I'd expect nothing less from Topps Museum Collection. This giant swatch steals the show, but hiding off to the right is a serial number, #10 of just 50 printed. This is probably the first relic card I have of a Ray, and it makes sense that it would be Chris Archer. I've been running into him a lot this year.

There's an $8 price tag on the back of this one, but it probably came out of one of the discount relic boxes that most dealers put out on their table. 2 for $5 or something like that.

2002 Fleer Premium On Base! Game Used #11 Todd Helton /100 (MEM)

In fact, it was probably purchased with this Todd Helton relic, the easiest player to find at any Denver-area card show. The serial number is much less noticeable on this one, as it appears on the back in black, blending in with the rest of the printing.

Fleer was putting out some very boring white sets in their later years, but they jazzed up this Fleer Premium card by adding a piece of a base, a first in my collection. The vast majority of my relic collection is made up of uniform swatches, with a handful of wooden bat slivers and the occasional baseball leather. But to have a piece of an actual base is certainly unique, and Fleer even states that this is from an official game at Coors Field. You might think it was smoother, like the back of a golf glove, but it's actually more like the soft rubber grip on a kitchen utensil.

Amazingly, in all that white space, Fleer somehow forgot to add a card number. Beckett says it's number 11 in the 30-card memorabilia set, so we'll go with that. The aforementioned serial number is out of 100 copies, but even the base version of this is limited. In keeping with the "On Base!" theme, the insert cards without relics were given a print run equal to the player's 2001 on-base percentage. At least in the base set, the higher the card number, the higher the print run. Helton is on the upper end of that with 432 base card copies, topping out at 515 with none other than on-base machine Barry Bonds.

2013 Bowman Platinum Prospect Autographs Green Refractors #BPAP-WS Will Swanner /399 (AU)

Maybe my mom has a preference for negative space in the cards she picks out. Bowman Platinum left plenty of space for then-prospect Will Swanner to sign in blue Sharpie without even covering up the /399 serial number. It's not quite as empty as a specific Jeff Francis card in my collection, but the autograph is clearly the star of the show here, even with that green background behind the photo.

As we all know, Bowman is a prospecting set. But for every Stephen Strasburg, you have a flotilla of players that never get the big call-up, even during September when rosters expand. Swanner was billed as a power-hitting catcher, but he topped out at the Double-A level. He hit 17 homers in 2015 for the New Britain Rock Cats, and progressed up to Triple-A Albuquerque in 2016. There, in just ten games, he managed one homer on a .194 batting average, was sent back down the farm system, and was released in June of 2016. That's the last line on his stats page, so it looks like his baseball career is over. The Rockies are pretty well set on catchers these days anyway, having just traded for Jonathan Lucroy, and with young guys like Tom Murphy and Tony Wolters looking promising.

2013 Topps Update Franchise Forerunners #FF-9 Rickey Henderson / Yoenis Cespedes

Mom must know I like green cards. This one makes me wonder why I don't collect more Oakland A's cards, so I'll have to give that some thought. But she picked an insert card from 2013 Topps Update's Franchise Forerunners set, one of the few that year that didn't hit us over the head with the "Chase" theme. All ten cards are combo cards, with this one showing the all-time stolen base leader Rickey Henderson taking a lead, pictured below the now-Met Yoenis Cespedes.

If he's now a Met, you might be thinking that means he's had some injury problems this season. And you'd be correct. Cespedes recently injured his (other) hamstring, the same injury that kept him out for the first couple months of 2017. And as I write this, I'm reading the ticker on MLB Network all about Michael Conforto, who injured his shoulder on a swing (yes, really) late last month. Both Conforto and Cespedes will miss the rest of the Mets season.

2013 Select Skills #SK39 Ozzie Smith

Just because you can't use logos doesn't mean you can't make a card shiny. Select was relaunched for a one-year run in 2013, making us all remember the mid-range set that Pinnacle put out year after year in the 1990s. I don't remember it ever being quite this shiny, but I'll take it. The "Skills" word at the top indicates this is another insert card, which is from a rather huge 45-card set. We get a zoomed-in version of the same photo on the back, along with a well-written paragraph describing Smith's unmistakable flair in the field, and that he "always recorded outs in style."

Even without calling him The Wizard or mentioning his signature backflip, Panini put out a great card of Ozzie Smith.

1994 Flair #36 Frank Thomas

Finally, the only main set card in this stack is also the oldest. Frank Thomas was a cardboard god in 1994, strike or no. And his card from a premium brand like Flair probably could have paid for lunch. The stats on the back are a little hard to read since they're superimposed over another full-bleed photo of Thomas in his pinstripes, but it's clear enough to spot his 41 home runs in 1993, along with an average that was well over .300 for each year thus far in the big leagues. He had a few down years, but his lifetime average just squeaked over the line at .301. Fleer doesn't list it as the batting average but rather the percentage, abbreviated "Pct." We can all assume that's the batting average, as there's nothing like an on-base percentage, slugging percentage, or fielding percentage included, let alone a modern Sabermetrics stat like OPS or BABIP.

Obviously, Thomas's initial is given the royal treatment, framed in a gold banner like medieval heraldry. Hard to miss that. In my early collecting days, I found more 1993 Flair than 1994, but the overall theme is more or less the same. 1994 gave us more gold foil and a bit less soft focus. This might be found in the discount bin today, but it still has a little essence left of the prestige it carried during the tail end of the baseball card boom.

This was an awesome surprise to receive as a gift earlier in the year, and I think any non-collector would be hard-pressed to do a better job at picking seven assorted cards for someone else's collection. Well done, Mom, and thanks.