The Trading Post #138: Big Shep's Cards (Part 2: Fleer)

After Topps, Fleer was my second favorite baseball card brand growing up. The local big-box store carried a lot of Fleer product, which was both easy to find and affordable. In fact, 1993 Fleer was the first set I completed from scratch, rather than just buying the factory set or a hand-collated set at the card shop. So when I was sorting through a large box from Big Shep's Cards, there were plenty of great Fleer cards to put together a post with.

1997 Ultra #189 Kevin Ritz

And Fleer Ultra, commonly known as just "Ultra" despite the gold foil branding Fleer put on every card, leads things off with a duo of Rockies. Kevin Ritz and Todd Hollandsworth were NL West rivals in the 1997 Ultra set, but both spent time with the Rockies, though they were never teammates. This photo of Ritz is probably from 1996, meaning that Todd Hollandsworth's cameo is from his Rookie of the Year season. There are two more photos of Ritz on the back, and he has the same snarling expression on each one.

I got his autograph on a hat during one of my earliest trips to Coors Field, which has since been lost to time. My sister got one too, on a scrap of paper my dad helpfully produced from a pocket memo pad, which ended up in my collection. Dad's hyper-preparedness is sort of a running joke in my family, but he's had the last laugh every time it counts.

Kevin Ritz's actual autograph looks a bit different from the script typeface used on this card, but it's clear what Fleer was going for with the nameplate. They even blended the team banner into the Z at the end of Ritz's surname. All the 1997 Ultra cards have that blending, which works nearly perfectly with Zs and Gs and such, but quite poorly with Rs and Ss. It's definitely an ancestor of 2017 Stadium Club.

2001 Ultra Tomorrow's Legends #4 Todd Helton

I always enjoy looking through the checklists of insert sets that proclaim young players as "Tomorrow's Legends" or "Hall Bound" to see how accurately the card companies selected star players. Is it full of flashes in the pan, or is it more like a visit to Cooperstown? Tomorrow's Legends from 2001 Ultra is a bit of a mix, as usual. You've got your Derek Jeters and Vladimir Guererros in this 15-card set, but also a few who never even had an All-Star selection, like Pat Burrell and Rick Ankiel.

Todd Helton is still in the early stages of his Hall of Fame candidacy, but in 2001, he was fresh off the best season he'd ever have. As with most of his early cards, the card back tells us that he was teammates with Peyton Manning at the University of Tennessee. That was before he became the face of the Rockies, and long before his uniform number in Denver would be retired.

1993 Ultra Performers #7 David Nied

A pair of cards showing Todd Helton and David Nied will give you a complete history of everyone who ever wore #17 for the Rockies. You can see Nied's previous stewardship of that number in the lower right quadrant, the yellow one.

This colorful card is from a 1993 set known as Ultra Performers, and while I purchased plenty of product from Fleer in 1993, I've never seen this one. That's because it's not actually an insert set, but rather it's more of a redemption, only orderable directly from Fleer in exchange for about $10 and some pack wrappers.

Fleer took the trouble to serial number this set, printing the set number in a little white box on the card back, right below the Ultra Performer logo. That same gold foil logo with the blue baseball trail appears both front and back, and the card number is also in gold foil. This one is #34,547 out of 200,000 sets printed. And if Fleer's marketing department took the stance that one of 200,000 was exclusive, just think of how many millions upon millions of cards were printed for the main releases.

2001 Fleer Premium #172 Jeff Cirillo

Fleer Premium only existed for two years, just like Jeff Cirillo's tenure with the Rockies. I've shown his 2002 Premium card, which is a Rockies card in photograph only. Really, it's more of a Mariners card. But in the inaugural 2001 Fleer Premium set, Cirillo has a true Rockies card. It's sturdy, shiny, black bordered, and really quite beautiful. The card back doesn't have many frills either, mainly just statistics, vitals, and a small color photo. He was a real workhorse, playing in over 150 games in each of the five seasons Fleer provided stats for.

If it wasn't buried under an avalanche of other Fleer products, I could see this one doing quite well. Perhaps if Fleer (now part of Upper Deck) ever makes a comeback, a design like this could one day grace packs again.

2001 Fleer Game Time #88 Magglio Ordóñez

As in the Topps post, another Chicago White Sock snuck into the Rockies pile. This one is of Magglio Ordóñez, a longtime American League outfielder hailing from Venezuela. I'm not an expert on Maggs by any means, but I certainly knew of him. Six All-Star selections and a batting title is certainly good enough to appear in a set like Tomorrow's Legends.

Or at least in a smallish Fleer set like Game Time. Not counting short prints, the main set is just 90 cards.

For some reason, this has always looked to me like it should be a hockey set. Maybe it's the small inset photo in the lower left with the grid over it, which reminds me of the tight weave of a hockey net. The background photo, which matches the main photo, transitions to a pixelated look as it moves from top to bottom. There's also a grainy element in the upper left, which I think is meant to represent TV "snow", the noisy static you used to get in the pre-digital rabbit ear days of broadcast television.

2002 E-X #50 Todd Helton

Long ago, I was sent a Todd Helton relic card from 2002 E-X, and now here's the base card. It's a translucent acetate, with a pale gold color making up the non-purple parts of the design. Interestingly, the gold color completely disappears when you hold it up to the light (also when you scan it), looking more like frosted glass. If you look really closely at the design, there's a little bit of texture in the purple area, which is supposed to be baseball stitches. It's very subtle.

All these designs are nice to look at, but none of these past three have any sort of player-specific paragraph on the card back. Maybe no one really reads them anyway (I've certainly never read all my 1991 Score cards), but if there's anything I find lacking in all these Fleer sets, it's that.

1997 Fleer Rookie Sensations #17 Neifi Pérez

Several years ago, there was a Topps Update insert set called Rookie Sensations. The particular card I have from that set is of Troy Tulowitzki. But long before that, Fleer used the same name for a 20-card insert set. The background encapsulates the late-'90s, and the swirly patterns look either like magnetic field lines or a wind speed map, depending on which scientific field you're an expert in. There were a lot of weird designs to be found throughout the late-'90s, and many of them came from Fleer.

That strange, blocky typeface on the front is also used on the back for the write-up, and it's a little tricky to read. The black letters don't stand out very well against this pink-and-green vortex. In it, Neifi Pérez is compared to Rey Ordóñez, no relation to Magglio.

Joining Pérez in the Rookie Sensations set were Rey Ordóñez, Derek Jeter, Todd Hollandsworth, Bobby Abreu, and quite a few players from that Tomorrow's Legends Ultra insert set.

2003 Fleer Tradition #421 Jason Jennings AW

On his card, Neifi Pérez was listed as a "'97 Rookie of the Year Hopeful". Scott Rolen was the winner that year, the player who finally broke the Dodgers's streak of five straight Rookies of the Year. Before that run, Jeff Bagwell won in 1991.

It would take five more years before a Rockie would win Rookie of the Year honors in 2002, documented on this Fleer Tradition card. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2002 was the year the famous humidor was installed at Coors Field. The card back says that Jennings wasn't intimidated by the thin air at Coors Field, but really it's the dry air that poses a problem. You should see my hands in the winter months. I never really think to wear lotion (and certainly not when handling cards), but they dry out nearly as badly as the baseballs when the days get short.

In any case, Jason Jennings took home the only Rookie of the Year award a Rockie has ever won, and he did it the same year he got to wear a 10th Anniversary patch on his right sleeve, about as clearly visible as any collector can hope for.

Our third and final post will cover the remaining brands. Maybe even Pacific.

The Trading Post #137: Big Shep's Cards (Part 1: Topps)

For my 300th post(!), I'm kicking off a three-part series of cards I purchased from Big Shep's Cards nearly a year ago. It was a giant stack of several hundred cards, and it took a while to organize, let alone pick a small handful to feature on the blog. Most were from the 1990s and early 2000s across all brands. We'll start Part 1 with Topps, my favorite card company ever since the beginning of my collecting career.

1994 Stadium Club Team #110 Nelson Liriano

I rarely see them on the blogs, but the early-'90s Stadium Club team sets show up in my travels surprisingly often. I see them at card shows, I see them at local card shops, and I've seen them in many trades. The 1994 set is maybe a little less common than 1993, and by now I've added the complete Rockies team sets from both years.

Not every team was represented in these team sets, and Topps trimmed the number of teams from sixteen in 1993 to twelve in 1994, but the Rockies were found in both years. As a Rockies fan, I am normally shut out of a whole slew of sets, especially inserts, simply by virtue of being a fan of a less-adored team. Dodgers and Yankees collectors have little idea what this is like. Rockies fans, on the other hand....

Anyway, sorry, Astros fans. You'll have to settle for a cameo this time. This one is Steve Finley, trying to break up a double play inside Mile High Stadium against middle infielder Nelson Liriano. I remember Liriano quite well from the early days of the Rockies. However, I missed his second and final stint with the Rockies in 1998, where he played a dozen games before retiring for good.

Steve Finley would also conclude his career with the Rockies, though much later, in 2007. He managed to play for every NL West team during his long career.

1994 Stadium Club Team #243 Bruce Hurst

One could not be faulted for thinking this is a Rockies card. It shows Bruce Hurst in a Rockies uniform, complete with the 1993 Inaugural Season patch on his right sleeve. Hurst, making his Infield Fly Rule debut 300 posts in, pitched very briefly for the Rockies in 1993. He started three games, pitched 8.2 innings, posted an ERA of 5.19, and then re-entered free agency.

The longtime Red Sox veteran didn't have a fantastic end to his career. His ERA with the Padres in early 1993 was even worse than it was with the Rockies later that year, a whopping 12.46. The Padres sent him and Greg Harris to the Rockies, in exchange for Brad Ausmus, Doug Bochtler, and PTBNL Andy Ashby.

Ouch.

Hurst decided he had enough of the NL West, and signed with the Texas Rangers. Looking closely at the vertical gold foil in the upper right tells us that this is indeed a Rangers card. He went 2-1 in 8 games, and didn't return to playing baseball once the strike was settled.

With the increase in Topps's use of Photoshop, cards like this have become a thing of the past. They make our collector's OCD go a little crazy, but it's kind of fun to see other uniforms in your team set, sometimes with a little note on the card front. "NOW WITH RANGERS", or something to that effect.

1993 Bowman #147 Johnny Ruffin

It was a similar story with 1993 Bowman. Johnny Ruffin never played for the Rockies. For that matter, he never played for the White Sox either, the team he's actually pictured with. Before purple took more of a center stage, the White Sox and Rockies often wore very similar uniforms. They still do on occasion, when they both suit up with pinstriped home whites. In fact, the one time I saw the White Sox play in Denver, it wasn't that easy to tell a Rockies fan and a White Sox fan apart.

I knew which one I was, though.

Coincidentally, the Rockies had a player named Bruce Ruffin, though no relation to Johnny. Perhaps that and the similar uniform led this card to migrate into the wrong team stack.

The younger Ruffin signed with Chicago at the young age of 16, but was one of many prospects that ended up not living up to the hype. Unfortunately, he ended up running into some legal trouble as well. I did see him play once, as he came on in relief for the Reds during the final Rockies home game of 1993, the same game that Upper Deck snapped Joe Girardi's photo for the 1994 set.

2002 Topps Opening Day #17 Juan Pierre

Once upon a time, Opening Day was more than the foil-less downmarket set it is today. Nearer its inception, there was a colored border that was arguably prettier than the actual base set, not to mention a large foil seal. I like this copper color way more than the mustard yellow found in 2002 flagship. The border has shown a chip or two, but it looks just as good on the back. And those color-coded ribbons on the top and bottom have that chevron on the end, a throwback to many of the 1970s Topps designs.

Speaking of the Reds, I am fairly certain those are some Reds coaches in the third base dugout behind a sliding Juan Pierre at Coors Field. Not many teams had those red-on-black caps, but a few had red-on-dark blue.

No one will mistake this one for a White Sox card, that's for sure.

2014 Topps Trajectory Relics #TR-TT Troy Tulowitzki (MEM)

Our final two cards are of the "hit" variety, starting with a familiar-looking relic card of Troy Tulowitzki. This is from the Topps Trajectory insert set, which came in both relic and autograph flavors. I blogged about one of the autographs just over five years ago, but I never realized that the large circular area on the left would be a perfect spot for a relic. There's no autograph sticker to cover up the photograph, which makes this design a little more well-balanced in relic form.

It also took me five years to notice that the player's uniform number can be found on this busy design, toward the bottom.

Unlike Johnny Ruffin, who took over five years to make it from the minors to the Big Leagues (although he started at age 16), Tulowitzki accomplished that in just fourteen months, according to the card back.

2012 Bowman Chrome Rookie Autographs #218 Wilin Rosario (AU)

Concluding the Topps portion of this series is another "hit', this time an on-card autograph of catcher Wilin Rosario. It will go nicely with a mini relic I already had of his. There are a whole bunch of Wilin Rosario cards in my collection, and now I have an autograph to go with it.

I was inundated with so much 2012 Bowman at various card shows that it's one of the few recent Bowman sets I can recognize and assign to the correct year. I think that may be because it looks like an upside-down version of the "notch" found at the top of the newer iPhone devices, especially in the prospect set. It doesn't pop as much with a black border, and is muted further still when it's a Chrome card. I'm just happy I can pick out at least one Bowman set from the past decade.

I have a couple more stacks ready to go. The next one will be Fleer, although with as busy as December gets, I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to write that one up for post #301.

By the way, congratulations to Nick on hitting his eight-year anniversary yesterday!