The Trading Post #106: I Need New Hobbies (Part 2: Not as Shiny)

When Scott at I Need New Hobbies reached out to me after a while to do a trade, this was the card that opened negotiations, so to speak.

2017 Topps Gypsy Queen Green #85 Raimel Tapia

Trevor sent me the autographed version of this card early this year, and Scott found this green version for me, always a favorite color around here. Compared to the autographed version, the Rookie Card logo lost its color, while the photo area gained a bit more space. The centering is actually not that great, but it's good enough to show the old-timey border that GQ is so well-known for. And this is one of those situations where I have a few varieties of a card, but lack the base card itself.

I really couldn't put non-shiny cards like these in the same post as some of the beauties from Part 1, opting instead to split this trade into two posts. Not only are they not shiny, some of these aren't even glossy.

2008 Upper Deck Goudey #65 Troy Tulowitzki

Yes, I know that Goudey cards still have the Upper Deck hologram on the back, which looks pretty out of place on actual cardboard. But that's only on the back. The front gives us a retro look, one of the best bat-barrel shots you can find, and a gratuitous picture of Ken Griffey, Jr., which is found on all the National League cards in Goudey that year. Derek Jeter was the equivalent on American League cards, but neither superstar actually seems to have anything to say about these players. The design certainly seems to suggest that we're getting a quote from The Kid about Troy Tulowitzki, but the paragraph on the back is just your run-of-the-mill baseball card caption.

Upper Deck did this concept correctly in a 1993 insert set featuring the thoughts of Reggie Jackson.

1993 Upper Deck Clutch Performers #R1 Roberto Alomar

In addition to a gold foil facsimile signature from Reggie, complete with his uniform number 44, the back has a small black-and-white headshot and the following paragraph about Roberto Alomar:

"Arguably the best player in baseball. He can beat you every possible way. In 1992, Alomar was the best performer in late innings, and at only 25 years old, he is just scratching the surface of a great career."

It might have been edited a bit, but I can believe that Reggie Jackson actually said something to that effect. The Goudey cards are just too normal-sounding, and don't seem to have a style any different between the AL and NL cards.

1998 Ultra #57 Andres Galarraga

I never snagged one myself, but Andres Galarraga is frequently seen signing autographs for adoring fans. 1998 Ultra shows the same, and this time he's actually signing a card. The blue pen he's using evokes the raised foil on the front of this 1998 Ultra card, but I can't quite tell which card he's signing. Presumably, it's a Fleer product. The few times I've seen this, it's always from the same card company. Rey Sanchez' 1994 Topps card comes to mind. I just can't place which of the Big Cat's cards this is. It's from his days as a Rockie, it appears to be a full-bleed card, and it looks like he's about to field a foul ball.

Anyone recognize it?

1998 Sports Illustrated Then and Now #138 Larry Walker

Larry Walker's textbook swing is shown on this horizontal card, co-branded by Fleer and Sports Illustrated. Just look at how he's turning over his wrists. It reminds me of one of the top ten Todd Helton cards I picked. The back has a similar vibe to the Alomar and Tulowitzki cards, as Fleer brought in legends Harmon Killebrew, Lou Brock, and Brooks Robinson to rate members of this set on Power, Speed, and Fielding. I trust that I don't need to specify which is which.

Larry Walker earned five out of five baseballs on Power and Fielding, missing a perfect score only on the Speed rating, where he got four out of five. There were a few Fleer/SI sets in 1998, but this is my first time seeing this one. I'm not entirely clear on the scoring system, though. One baseball means "Fair", but two means "Below Average". I'm not sure which of those two is supposed to be better. It's sort of like today's credit card offerings. The old Platinum, Gold, and Silver are obvious enough, but when you start throwing Diamond, Sapphire, Titanium, etc... in the mix, it's pretty unclear what the ranking is.

2003 SP Authentic #88 Larry Walker

It's hard to believe that SP was ten years old in 2003. Perhaps it's harder to believe that the inaugural 1993 SP set (and the Rockies, for that matter) will be a quarter-century old next year, but that's a different story. But a decade of SP had passed when this was printed, leading Upper Deck to include a little 10th Anniversary logo in the lower right. It's a clean design, just a bit of gold foil, some color coding, a green patch with just a hint of textured lines, and a crisp full-length photo.

One disappointing thing about that 1998 Sports Illustrated set is that it doesn't rate players on contact hitting. Tony Gwynn got some pretty low ratings in that set. And while Walker had much more power than Gwynn, he could still hit for average. Despite the slew of batting titles won by Rockies in their existence, only Larry Walker is a repeat winner, and three times at that. This card tells us that his 1999 mark of .379 "remains a Rockies single-season record", a fact that holds true to this day.

Unfortunately, SP is no longer around to keep tabs on Rockies batting titles, but it's possible MLB will sign up another manufacturer and take Topps' exclusivity away in 2020.

1993 Flair #40 Joe Girardi

The baseball world got to see lots of Joe Girardi in the 2017 Postseason. He led the Yankees as far as Game 7 of the ALCS, but didn't quite get the job done. The Yankees let him go at the end of the season, announcing Aaron Boone as their new manager a few days ago. Boone knows a thing or two about Game 7 of the ALCS. But Girardi did fairly well as a Yankees manager. They won the 2009 World Series with him at the helm, won the Wild Card a few times, and came very close this year.

Of course, he got his start as a catcher, being drafted by the expansion Rockies in 1993. That's shown on this 1993 Flair card, about as premium as it got in 1993. This particular card has a bit more curling than I tend to see from that set, but it looks great in a 9-pocket page.

The gradual transitions you see from one photo to another on 1993 Flair work better on some cards than others. The action shot of Girardi finding a foul pop in the sun is fine, but the top half of the home plate umpire is edited out, leaving us with an awkward set of pant legs topped by a stack of Gatorate cups. It's almost as bad as that infamous Manny Ramirez card.

1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond #76 Joe Girardi

This Upper Deck Electric Diamond parallel (shiny, but not shiny enough to be in Part 1) again shows Joe Girardi doing his catcherly duties, observing a Cincinnati Red down at the plate. That looks to be second baseman Juan Samuel, judging by that uniform #8. The Reds visited Denver twice during that inaugural season, but I couldn't find anything in the box scores regarding a play at the plate involving these two players.

And that's where it gets interesting.

Girardi missed about half of the 1993 season due to an injury, which coincided with the Reds' first trip to Denver. That leaves the final three home games of the Rockies' season. Again, no plays at the plate, but then I took a closer look. The ball is nowhere to be found, the coach is nonchalantly leaning on the dugout railing, Girardi is still holding his mask (which he would not do if trying to catch a ball incoming from the outfield), and Samuel looks a bit distressed.

Maybe it's a hit by pitch.

I dug a little deeper, and there was indeed such a situation, where Juan Samuel was hit by Armando Reynoso in the top of the 4th inning on September 26th, 1993. That was the only day game of that three-game series, and the final home game of the Rockies season. Which can mean only one thing.

I was at this game!

I don't recall this exact situation, even though I said a few months ago that I remembered this game "like it was yesterday." Memory is not as reliable as we think. But aside from Topps Now or UD Documentary, I finally found a card of a game I attended!

Incidentally, Samuel ended up being the third out anyway, thanks to Armando Reynoso's league-leading pickoff move.

2016 Donruss #114 Dexter Fowler

I'm not quite sure how to top that, so let's move on to the very specific category of "Past Rockies Center Fielders playing for Chicago Teams". First up is Dexter Fowler on an unlicensed Donruss card. There are a lot of red teams out there, but I'll go with this being a divisional game against either the Cardinals or Reds...er... St. Louis or Cincinnati. This would probably look better as a horizontal card, but that's not something Donruss really (ever?) did.

One thing Donruss always used to do was give us the player's full name. That trademark seems to have gone by the wayside, as he's just Dexter Fowler on both front and back, forcing me to head to Wikipedia to learn that his given name is William Dexter Fowler. But I do like that Panini ventured away from referring to the team only by its city, calling the Cubs the "North Siders" in one spot on the back.

1994 Score #431 Ellis Burks

Fowler headed to Chicago after he was a Rockie, but Burks was there before. He was just on the South Side a year before he joined up with Colorado and got his first taste of the National League. Score lauded him as a "tremendously talented athlete who has sizzling speed and graceful moves". He'd probably do pretty well on the Sports Illustrated ranking, likely edging out Walker on the Lou Brock Speed rating.

This is a very 1990s photo. I hardly ever see flip-down shades anymore. Odds are this is being played on astroturf. And there's a nearly life-size elephant pictured on the outfield wall, the logo of the Oakland Athletics, back when team logos from around the league used to dot every stadium. This card is a perfect opportunity to finally learn why the Athletics have anything to do with an elephant, and it goes way back to the early days of the American League. John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants, referred to the newly-created A's as a "White Elephant." Connie Mack proudly adopted it as manager, and it figured into the behind-the-scenes aspect of the 1905 World Series.

And that's why Ellis Burks has a giant elephant on his 1994 Score card.

1994 Topps Gold #468 Dante Bichette

Those Giants would eventually move out West to San Francisco, and their catcher (and future Rockie) Kirt Manwaring got a cameo on Dante Bichette's 1994 Topps card. Of course, this isn't just any Topps card. This happens to be the one-per-pack Topps Gold parallel, a set that was a real hot ticket in my collection as a 10-year old. I still gravitate toward them all these years later. Electric Diamond cards are nice, but these were the ones I chased.

1994 Topps had plenty of horizontal cards, and this one is another good candidate. both Manwaring himself and Bichette's bat are cut off, but we do get a good look at the swing and follow-through. It's the perpetual trade-off of a photographer choosing an aspect ratio.

The card back is horizontal, and it has his complete Major League stats (remember those?). However, I think there might be an error. We're told that his 1993 mark for runs scored was an expansion team record, and that his batting average of .310 (of course) was second-best by a hair-splitting .00007. But I think Topps meant to say third-best. Andres Galarraga had a whopping batting average of .370 that year, so whomever edged out Bichette must be in second place, putting Bichette in third.

1997 Pinnacle X-Press Swing for the Fences #9 Dante Bichette

Contest cards seem to be a thing of the past. These were all the rage in the 1990s as the numerous competing card companies tried to outdo each other. I rarely did anything with them, though I did enter a Score contest once and got a shiny Alex Rodriguez card.

I just saw a card from this set earlier today on The Angels, In Order, featuring Carlos Delgado. Winning the contest itself seemed to be quite a long shot, and an expensive one at that. There was nothing in the fine print about "No Purchase Necessary", so you had to stock up on retail and hobby boxes of Pinnacle to get the proper game cards for entry.

To win, you had to pick each league's Home Run leader, as well as their final number of home runs. It was a sixty-card set, and who knows exactly how many dingers there would be. And with that many contestants, there were some in this set that had no prayer of winning the home run crown. Tim Naehring didn't even get out of the single digits.

The final winners for the 1997 season were Larry Walker and Ken Griffey, Jr, with 49 and 56, respectively. Mark McGwire's card was also deemed a winner, as he split an MLB-leading 58 across both leagues. Bichette had an off year, topping out at 26.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I sent something like this off to the listed PO box. Probably nothing, especially since it seems hard enough to get redemptions for current sets. Would it come back as undeliverable? Does the person who now has this PO box see contest entries show up on occasion? It would be a fun experiment, and wouldn't cost more than a few stamps.

2002 Fleer Showcase Legacy #10 Todd Helton /175

Fleer Showcase was midway through its six-year run in 2002, and Todd Helton could be found as the Rockies entrant in pretty much any set. It's a nice design for a framed set, though the nameplate is a bit unreadable. But it does remind you of a fancy frame you might see in an art gallery, complete with a brass plaque.

If you flip this one over, you'll find the words "Legacy Collection", and a serial number to 175 copies. You'll also see that Helton had a .334 average after four full seasons and a late-1997 callup. He was awfully close to 200 doubles, and had just wrapped up that all-important age 27 season.

2003 Fleer Showcase Legacy #20 Todd Helton /150

Helton's equivalent card from the following year is a variation on the same theme. The nameplate is more readable, Helton is taking a swing in Wrigley field, and the Rockies' 10th Anniversary patch is visible on his right sleeve. Check the back and you'll find more of the same. His career batting average dropped just a point, his doubles count was up to 230, he had just won his third of four straight Silver Slugger awards, and Fleer lowered the print run on their Legacy Collection parallels by 25 copies.

Of the two, I'd say I prefer the front of 2003 and the back of 2002. But they're both easily recognizable as the same set, assuming you can differentiate the vast multitude of sets that Fleer was producing during that era.

2015 Stadium Club #261 Jake Odorizzi

Scott was kind enough to throw in a half-dozen cards from 2015 Topps Stadium Club, a set that is always welcome. One that caught my eye is this horizontal card of Rays righty Jake Odorizzi, a guy that I've picked for my Fantasy squad a time or two.

I've developed a good eye for spotting commemorative patches on cards, partly thanks to trading with Brian, who keeps those as a mini-collection. This one on Odorizzi's shoulder caught my attention, because the Rays are far too young a team to be celebrating a 75th anniversary of anything. It took a bit of digging, but that patch was worn league-wide on July 4th, 2014 to honor the 75th Anniversary of Lou Gehrig's retirement speech at Yankee Stadium. This briefly-worn patch escaped my attention at the time, but I clearly remember the ALS-related Ice Bucket Challenge, which went viral right around the same time.

That means we have a second card we can date. However, Odorizzi didn't start on July 4th, but rather in Yankee Stadium on July 2nd. That doesn't line up with the date the rest of the league wore the patch, but the offcial MLB press release on this topic notes that the Yankees commemorated this event a couple days early, while they weren't on the road. It's a scheduling issue that Peter Gammons took issue with on Twitter (with predictable results), but it's captured on this card nonetheless.

2015 Stadium Club Gold #183 Travis Ishikawa

Finally, here's a third that I'm confident in narrowing down to an exact date. Travis Ishikawa bounced around the Majors like a pinball, but ended up on the San Francisco Giants at just the right times to earn World Series rings in 2010 and 2014. That 2014 championship was partially thanks to his walkoff home run in the NLCS against the Cardinals, an Aaron Boone moment from someone who was definitely not a superstar.

I'm pretty sure the final moments of that game are captured on this Gold parallel, as Ishikawa flung his batting helmet to the ground in elation after sending his team to the World Series. Lots of helmet flinging happens in AT&T Park, apparently. I never saw him play as a Giant, despite living in an NL West city, but I did see him play for the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats in 2015, where he hit two homers in a win over the Salt Lake Bees. As best I can recall, his helmet remained on his head.

Stadium Club gives us plenty of awesome photography, that much we know. But if you know what you're looking for, it's easy for a fan to get even more out of the set.

The Trading Post #57: My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones

There isn't room for everyone in the SuperTraders group, but that hasn't stopped trades from arriving from elsewhere in the Cardsphere. You might call My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones from Mark a newcomer, but he celebrates his one-year anniversary today! Join me in congratulating Mark on this milestone!

2014 Topps Archives #177 Carlos Gonzalez

CarGo seems happy about it, as he appears on a Topps Archives card based on the 1989 design. It's definitely no Stadium Club, but this set keeps growing on me year after year. There's just something so distinctive about the feel of Archives' card stock, which really helps differentiate them. Especially when it's an expansion team, it breathes new life into designs we've seen ten million times, and they even seem to use recycled photos less frequently than in other Topps sets.

Not that anyone would think one this is an original 1989 card, but there's not much risk of confusion anyway, unlike with the glossy reprints of very recent cards found in Cards Your Mom Threw Out and 60 Years of Topps sets. Night Owl made a point of how tough it is to tell the originals from the reprints on a series of Mike Piazza cards last week.

2015 Topps Archives #162 Nolan Arenado

Plus, it helps me learn the old designs a bit better. I can pick out the mid-'80s and on quite easily, but many 1970s sets confuse me. Is this Arenado supposed to be based on 1973, 1976, or 1979? '73 and '76 both have a little player outline in the lower corner, but both '76 and '79 have solid-colored bars at the bottom. A quick Google Image search confirms that it's 1976. And all the little pennants in 1974, 1977, and 1980 tend to throw me too.

So Archives is helping educate this collector that came up in the overproduction era, one who had allowance money for packs of 1991 Score and 1993 Fleer, but not for much in the way of vintage.

1995 Stadium Club #618 Larry Walker TA

Another day, another subset from 1995 Stadium Club that I've never seen before. Like the Extreme Corps card that came from Wes, apparently TSC made a Trans Action subset in their High Numbers release that year. News to me. I like the color scheme on this one a bit more than Extreme Corps card.

1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond #483 Ellis Burks

Ellis Burks, a member of the Blake Street Bombers with Larry Walker, gets an action shot on 1994 Upper Deck, breaking a three-card string of Guys Resting Bats On Their Shoulders. I'm guessing this is a spring training shot, as there's an obvious A's fan in the crowd, and the Rockies didn't wear black jerseys in the regular season until many seasons later.

Cards like this make me miss Upper Deck. The sparkly finish on Electric Diamond cards predated Topps' Sparkle parallels by almost two decades. Topps has always been my favorite manufacturer, but it would be really nice to have some competition in the market.

2015 Stadium Club #32 Nolan Arenado

Still, the return of Stadium Club does help ease UD's passing, as the look of pure joy on Arenado's face puts this card head and shoulders above all the pitchers' straining faces we've seen in Topps Base for like five straight years. The only downside is that the same Arenado photo on the back can be found on at least three Topps cards.

2010 Topps Chrome #143 Troy Tulowitzki

I've been known to buy a pack or two of Topps Chrome. Some years are shinier than others, but in my opinion 2010 was the worst for "the curl". Curling on the horizontal axis isn't so terrible, and we're all pretty much used to it by now, but on the vertical axis it gets kind of weird, and many of the cards from a blaster I once bought of this are pretty much curled from the lower left to the upper right. Even now, I can glance over at my rows of binders and know exactly where my 2010 Topps Chrome cards are, since they don't lay flat and cause the pages to bulge.

2007 Upper Deck Spectrum #62 Todd Helton

They just keep getting shinier from here on out. This is from Upper Deck Spectrum, and it's one heck of a base card. Shiny silver with a hint of rainbow, vertical black borders (sort of like the 2007 UD base set), and a reflective Tron-like surface on the bottom. I'll have to find a way to squeeze this into my 2007 Upper Deck binder pages, which are already filled with what feels like a dozen and a half sets they made that year.

2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition #17 Charlie Blackmon

Pre-beard Charlie Blackmon gets a card in the shiniest Donruss Elite set I can recall. I'm more familiar with their recent sets, and they used a lot more red in those. I can't quite place his uniform though. None of the Rockies' minor league clubs have cities or names that could match "JACK".

Maybe it means Jackpot, since starting in outfield for the Rockies was pretty close to my childhood idea of winning the lottery.

That, or owning my own jet airplane.

2013 Finest #12 Carlos Gonzalez

Though CarGo's road uniform doesn't look quite as striking as Tulo's purple pinstripes, 2013 Finest fits well with the other shiny silver cards Mark sent my way. The hexagonal theme of 2003 Finest remains one of my top three favorite Finest designs (along with that gorgeous green of 1994). The rows of circles on this design look a little bit like one of those mesh park benches, or a Connect Four game board.

2008 SPx #30 Matt Holliday

Die-cut cards seem more appealing every time I run across one, and Upper Deck did a stellar job with this one. The shading seen in each corner really makes this look like it's a two-layer card. Of course, there's a nice rainbow finish and cute little baseballs in each corner, but I am super impressed with this card. Every time I touch the corner I expect to feel another edge, although the visual effect isn't quite as pronounced on the back due to the lack of shininess.

My scanner never feels the same way about die-cuts, as it has enough trouble auto-cropping a perfect rectangle. But I'll appreciate this one for a long time to come.

Finally, I'll be doing a mail run in the next day or two, to recipients both on and off the #Supertraders list. Check the below list for your ZIP/Postal code!

07044
02766
13601
14222
20904
27314
28590
29730
29841
45067
55406
60706
70062
78125
79083
87499
N2H 5M5

Thanks for reading!

The Pity Prize Group Break (Part 1: The Rockies)

Back in October, Nachos Grande ran a group break consisting of some later 2015 releases: Stadium Club, Heritage High Numbers, Chrome, etc.... I signed up for my usual Rockies slot, knowing full well that he'd throw in some extras regardless of what came out of the primary boxes. And what did come out of those boxes was all sorts of shiny goodness.

2015 Topps Chrome #108 Rafael Ynoa (RC)

Rafael Ynoa has yet to really make his mark as a Rockie, but with the Rockies continuing to stockpile outfielders, and Arenado firmly entrenched at third base, there might not be much room for him on the roster, especially given his late arrival to the Majors. Still, he got a card in Topps Chrome, and I really like that the chromey outline that usually just surrounds the player extends to the ripple and curved lines on the bottom. See all the extra things you can do without a plain white border?

2015 Topps Chrome #66 Nolan Arenado

Arenado's Chrome card came my way too, which shows off his uniform number in a great post-swing pose, just like the rainbow foil version that I got via trade earlier this year. The curl on this year's Chrome cards isn't too bad, and the awesome border of the 2015 set gets even more accentuated with the shiny treatment.

2014 Stadium Club #132 Wilin Rosario

I'm pretty sure I had this one already, as my trading career in the cardsphere kicked off right around when 2014 Stadium Club launched. Rosario is stoked about something, and you can even see a reflection of Coors Field in his helmet. There was a bit of 2015 Stadium Club as well, which I'll get to later, but of the two, I think I prefer the 2014 set. It was pretty groundbreaking when it came out (assuming you're not an autograph collector), and the photography really couldn't be beat. 2015 is pretty similar, but I prefer the color coding found in 2014.

2015 Topps Heritage #532 Daniel Descalso

I've never been that interested in Heritage High Numbers; usually the first series is sufficient. All I'm really after with Heritage is the design. They don't need to deliberately reproduce the same errors and gimmicks that existed 49 years ago. Still, it is nice to see some of the lesser-known players in this later series. Descalso pretty much flew under the radar for his first year as a Rockie, but it's always nice to have a guy or two with playoff experience in the clubhouse. Just in case. His 44 postseason games are even the subject of the cartoon on the back.

2015 Topps Heritage #540 Rafael Betancourt

Wherever they shot Descalso's photo, they also shot Betancourt's and most of the other Rockies in this set. I can't quite tell what that structure is behind them. Probably the back of the scoreboard in whichever spring training facility they're in, but at a distance, it looks like the mesh fence at the edge of a driving range.

2015 Stadium Club #242 Troy Tulowitzki

I usually don't have much of a problem with foil, but that's really all there is on the front of 2015. I like to see just a bit of color. Of course, it has the stellar photography this brand is known for, and they even spelled his name right. I got Morneau's card too, which somehow looks even sharper. Printing technology has progressed dramatically, so I can see plenty of detail with that magnifying glass I just got.

2012 Triple Play #26 Todd Helton

2012 Triple Play was a late addition to the group break, and this might be my first time seeing it. I built the complete short set of 2013 Triple Play, and I feel like the caricatures that year were way more interesting than this inaugural (and penultimate) year.

2012 Panini Prizm #170 Drew Pomeranz (RC)

Let's not forget Prizm, another Panini brand that Chris threw in later on in the break. This Prizm set has the MLBPA logo front and back, surely to compensate for the fact that they don't have an MLB license. It's more or less a Topps Chrome equivalent, and now that we have a couple years of the resurrected Donruss under our belts, the little printed (though textureless) indentations look a lot like 2014 Donruss.

2012 Panini Prizm Prizms Green #162 Jordan Pacheco

This Pacheco rookie card parallel was the only "hit" I got from this break. My luck ran a little short, and I didn't end up with any other inserts, parallels, or relics/autos. I was shut out on the Topps High Tek box, which is fine, since I struck it big last time.

So if this is the only one, at least it's green.

Now, I don't tremendously mind the lack of logos and team names on Panini products, but the fact that they totally altered his jersey does bug me a bit. The Rockies have never worn solid white jerseys; their home jerseys have always had pinstripes. He is clearly at Coors Field here, so they did some pretty extensive photo editing on this one. All the black trim and accessories make him look like he's on the White Sox, but they have pinstripes, too!

But at least it's green.

2001 Stadium Club Diamond Pearls #DP19 Todd Helton

So is this one of Helton, though it's a different shade than I usually see. We're past the main group break items, so now we're into the stack of extras that Chris invariably throws in. It's an insert card from early in Helton's career, but toward the end of Stadium Club's initial run. I've seen so few of the late-90s insert sets that every one is pretty much new. This even lives up to its name, as the white area of the infield really does have an iridescent look. Even all the little white baseballs front and back look like pearls.

2008 Topps Gold Foil #25 Kaz Matsui

Kaz Matsui was one of the heroes of the Rockies 2007 postseason, drilling a grand slam in game 2 to set them up for the NLDS sweep. Though he became an Astro the following year, I won't soon forget his performance as a Rockie.

Even better, this is the gold foil parallel, one of which was found in every other pack. I wasn't really collecting that year, and all I know is the usual silver foil on the base cards. They kept up the tradition of printing a gold-bordered card with a /2008 serial number, but these gold foil cards aren't serial numbered. They do make the 2008 design look a bit better, even though that Topps logo encroaches on the photo, leading some to call this the "uvula set".

2008 Upper Deck X Xponential 2 #X2-TT Troy Tulowitzki

The second horizontal Tulo card in this post is brought to you by the letter X and the number 2. Upper Deck really likes the letter X. You've seen Xponential cards before, as I got an Xponential Griffey from a Collector's Crate box about a year ago, which is the most common of four insert sets. But this is the rarer Xponential 2 insert set (Xponential Squared?) which had fewer cards and was harder to find in packs. Perhaps one day I'll find cards from the Xponential Cubed and Xponential to the power of 4 insert sets.

That's not really what they were called. I'm just a math nerd.

1994 SP Die Cuts #164 Dante Bichette

When I was a kid, I knew of Upper Deck SP, but it was way out of my price range, and I liked Topps Finest better, anyway. It wasn't until the last few years that I started seeing SP cards. I knew I had seen the standard-cut version of this card before; turns out Chris sent it to me as a bonus card in his previous group break! Oddly, this card has a silver UD hologram on the back. I had always thought that SP cards came with a gold hologram, but I stand corrected. I like the shape, too. In my interpretation it's supposed to look like a Hall of Fame plaque, something any Rockie has yet to earn.

It doesn't end there, though! In Chris' judgment, my Rockies slot did the "worst" of all the 30 teams, so I ended up with a special prize as a consolation. Keep an eye out for my next post on that.

The Trading Post #52: A Cracked Bat

It's been barely a week since my last post about a trade from A Cracked Bat. That post was for a couple Eight Men Out cards that came along with the great Michigan-themed Christmas card I saw on a few other blogs out there. Clearly Julie has been up to her usual practice of spreading holiday cheer around the Cardsphere.

But I mentioned then that I was doing her trade posts out of order. That's because I received another stack from her around Thanksgiving, and there were quite a few more cards in it.

1997 Pinnacle #105 Rey Ordonez

When I put together my larger trade packages, I like to take the time to look for player cameos and the occasional alternate team logos that appear in backgrounds. I'll even check those tiny rookie card pictures on the backs of 1991-1993 Stadium Club. Some appreciate it, others don't. But Julie clearly knows I like player cameos. Why else would she include one of Dante Bichette?

Yes, that Pinnacle card isn't Bichette's at all. It's Rey Ordonez', a shortstop who spent most of his career with the Mets. This doesn't look like a double play card; rather it's probably a stolen base attempt.

Pinnacle went pretty overboard with gold foil, as did pretty much everyone in the late '90s, but they did do an interesting thing with this set. The area in the gold foil has various...nouns related to the team's home city. On this card alone, I can make out Sinatra, LaGuardia Airport, Statue of Liberty, Shea Stadium, Nolan Ryan, and Big Apple, along with cut-off segments of what I assume are Miracle Mets, David Letterman, and World Trade Center. It's a bit like the city skylines you'll find on the back of 1993 Leaf.

And I really need to get a magnifying glass.

1995 Pinnacle #336 Dante Bichette

1995 Pinnacle was about as bold with the gold foil as '97, going with the always-trusty baseball stitch design. But this shot of Bichette (actually his card this time) shows the luxury suites at Mile High Stadium better than I've ever seen on a card.

I saw three Rockies games at Mile High Stadium, along with two or three Denver Zephyrs games when I was a wee lad, although never a Broncos game. I don't remember much about those minor-league games, other than a fan in the stands leading a chant, "Gimme a Z! Gimme an E!" and so on for another letter or two until he realized he misspelled an admittedly difficult team name. Only a couple years later, Major League Baseball would arrive in Denver with a more chant-friendly team name.

1994 Collector's Choice Silver Signature #62 Daryl Boston

Daryl Boston was one of the faces of that inaugural team, certainly appearing in Mile High Stadium on this 1994 Collector's Choice card. I have that complete base set, but only a few dozen of these Silver Signature parallels. Like Topps Gold, they came one-per-pack, so they're fairly plentiful. There was also a Gold Signature parallel, one-per-box if I recall correctly. I never pulled one from a pack, but I've run into a few in dime boxes in recent years.

2015 Immaculate Collection #86 Nolan Arenado /99

Gold foil is still a thing twenty years later, but cards this thick were not. Immaculate Collection (isn't that a Madonna album?) looks to be a competitor to Topps Triple Threads or Museum Collection, and it has the price tag to match. At least when you buy it new. I don't know how well it sells, but I suppose autograph and relic collectors don't care as much about official MLB logos as us lower-end fans do.

One minor critique I have about this card is that the serial number is in silver foil, not gold. It's a little jarring to see silver among those thin gold lines. But that's just nitpicking. I really like this card! The purple areas remind me of 1995 Select; as they have a similar marble look, though it's much fainter here.

1996 Metal Universe Platinum #155 Vinny Castilla

And now we move from the elegance of Immaculate Collection to the incomprehensible weirdness of 1996 Metal Universe. Yes, that is a giant bee imprinted in the foil.

My girlfriend was quite baffled by this card. She kept asking,"Why is there a bee on this card? Why would they put a bee on a baseball card?"

Which is a fair question.

All I could come up with was, "it was the '90s."

According to BaseballCardPedia, Fleer was a subsidiary of Marvel at the time, and they were going for a sort of comic book theme, but it just comes out looking like the goofiest thing imaginable. And this set was so crazy, it was featured on a post from SB Nation's awesome Sports Cards For Insane People series. Others found in that series are the wacky art of Fleer Pro-Visions, the Mad Libs-esque 1995 Emotion set, and the racially insensitive Topps Big, which would cause a firestorm of epic proportions on social media if it were released today.

2015 Topps Chrome Prism Refractor #58 Justin Morneau

And all that makes this extra-shiny Chrome card seem positively tame. This doesn't have an obvious colored border, so based on all the tiny facets on the foil, I'm guessing this is the Prism Refractor. It took a few trips through this stack to notice the special finish, and only then it was under bright light.

2015 Topps Chrome Pink Refractor #11 Carlos Gonzalez

This one is easy, obviously the Pink Refractor. No serial number on either of these, but after the base version I got in Brad's pre-move giveaway, I'm already on my way to a CarGo rainbow without even buying a pack.

2015 Stadium Club Gold #175 Drew Stubbs

I purchased a box or two of 2014 Stadium Club, but only a pack and some assorted trades of 2015 Stadium Club, despite it being equally awesome. But Julie went and found a gold parallel of Drew Stubbs' Powerade shower, likely after his walkoff home run on August 17th, 2014, one of two walkoff hits Stubbs had that year, both of which the back of this card alludes to.

2014 Stadium Club Members Only #31 Todd Helton

Finally, a card I didn't think I'd ever own - A 2014 Stadium Club Members Only parallel! Julie put a note on the back of this penny sleeve saying she found it in a dime box, and that it only had a tiny ding in the corner. No problems there, as this is one of my favorite cards from one of my favorite sets. Members Only parallels aren't serial numbered, though they're estimated to be quite rare. They're a one-per-case parallel, which likely equates to less than ten copies printed based on the print run. 2015 Members Only cards were announced to have a print run of 7, so 2014 was probably about the same.

There was so much thought put into this trade package. Some awesome ones I never knew existed, some others that sent me down memory lane, a Mets card that sort of wasn't, and one that I never expected to see in my collection.

I'll give them a good home.

A Less Exclusive Club

I've been adding to my vintage collection a bit lately, but don't for a moment think that I'm abandoning current cards.

Stadium Club's resurrection is back in force for a second year, and now available in convenient pack form at your local big box retailer. Last year, the high rollers in this hobby didn't think it stacked up to the overpriced insanity of Museum Collection and the like, so Topps must have figured that it wasn't quite appropriate as a hobby-store-only product.

So I tossed a pack into my red handbasket and ended up with a dozen cards of full-bleed awesomeness.

2015 Stadium Club #12 Giancarlo Stanton

They feel a little thicker than last year, and the subtle lightening under the nameplate reminds me a bit of Flair. And the top-notch photography just can't be beat. I can't quite tell who's behind the plate, absorbing pitches as Stanton bides his time to crush a monster home run. But it's a great example of an all-dirt "Tatooine" card, and we get a pretty good look at how the batters box and infield can be watered differently.

Stanton seems surprisingly forward in the batter's box, and if he tried to swing here, he definitely checked it.

2015 Stadium Club #88 Chris Davis

There were quite a few horizontal cards in this pack, but the vertical ones are typically more plentiful anytime there's a mixture. That holds true for 2015 Stadium Club, and let's be honest, Chris Davis' forearm is pretty much the focal point here. The steroid era may be over, but it still takes plenty of strength to lead the Majors in home runs. Of course, that happens the year after I picked him in fantasy baseball.

2015 Stadium Club #136 Reggie Jackson

I do enjoy seeing retired legends appear in the base set (as long as it's not in flagship), and Reggie rounds out a trio of HR-hitting stars. Though Davis and Stanton are both quite young, they have a long way to go before they match Jackson's 563 career dingers.

Jackson is probably most well-known among casual fans for his performance in the 1977 World Series, but as this card points out, he had quite a successful run in Oakland before donning the pinstripes.

2015 Stadium Club #35 Ryne Sandberg

Sandberg, on the other hand, was a Cubbie almost his entire career, at least until he returned to Philadelphia to manage the team that drafted him. I've seen this card on many blogs, and it's a favorite of mine, too. The sharpness of modern printing does blow me away from time to time, as the texture of Ryno's jersey and the stains on his hat almost pop off the cardboard.

2015 Stadium Club Legends Die Cut #LDC-04 Willie Mays

If you remember the hobby box of 2014 Stadium Club I bought, then you'll recall that I pulled a Willie Mays insert from one of the mini-boxes that year too. Between the card above, last year's Field Access card, and a serial-numbered rarity from Topps High Tek, I've been having awesome luck pulling Mays cards the past year or so.

Die-cut cards are hit or miss for me. Topps Chrome has been going way overboard in recent years, but this Mays is just about my speed. And the color-coding across this insert set is great, especially this copper-colored Giants card.

2015 Stadium Club #13 Ernie Banks

It's not every day that President Obama drapes a Presidential Medal of Freedom around your neck. Like Mays and of course Jackie Robinson, Banks was one of the first African-American players in the MLB. Despite the obvious challenges that remain in this country, a baseball card depicting America's first black president awarding a medal to an early black baseball player many years his senior is a positive and inspirational image, reminding us of how far we've come, yet also how far we have to go.

Other than the obvious Sammy Sosa, Banks is second all-time in Cubs home runs, so his baseball career is nothing to sneeze at, either. Unfortunately for both him and Ryno, neither ever competed in a World Series, but after the recent passing of Mr. Banks, this would be the perfect year for the Cubs to change that.