The Trading Post #150: cards as i see them

The contents of a trade with gcrl, who writes the lower-case cards as i see them, tells me that I need to do a better job of keeping my wish list up to date. I have a spreadsheet with a couple hundred cards that would be perfect for my Coors Field Frankenset, and no one knows what's on it but me. I did have a couple cards included on the wish list, as well as a few other wants on the usual Eight Men Out list, and gcrl hit them both with surgical precision.

2000 Ultra #9 Mickey Morandini

A lot of what ends up on my wish lists comes from what I see across the blog community. I don't know where I first saw this Mickey Morandini card, the first of two Eight Men Out needs that gcrl found for me, but it's perfect for this lifelong Rockies fan. If I had to make a guess, I may have originally seen it on Dime Boxes. It is a Cubs card with a double play, so it's right up Nick's alley.

I mainly remember second baseman Morandini with the Phillies, but he spent two years in the Windy City. Here, he's turning a double play over the head of Dante Bichette, who's sliding into second in Wrigley Field. It's a great photo for a set like Fleer Ultra, whose spirit still lives on in Stadium Club. Even the nameplate has the rainbow foil look used by some of the recent Stadium Club parallels.

Curiously, one of the other 2000 Ultra cards that has appeared on this blog also involves a double play. They make great action photos and you get the added bonus of a cameo.

1994 Topps Gold #792 Dan Pasqua

Speaking of cameos, the second Eight Men Out card also has another player invading the frame. This is another one of the Topps Gold cards that appeared only in the Gold parallel set, replacing the checklist cards found in the base set. I completed the six 1993 cards earlier this year, partially thanks to gcrl. Now, on to 1994! Topps used a tinier font on the 1994 checklists, allowing them to get it down to four cards instead of the prior six.

As with the checklist situation, the overall 1994 set was a little smaller than 1993, returning to the then-familiar 792 cards. White Sox first baseman Dan Pasqua got card #792, the very last player to displace a checklist in 1994. He's fielding a pickoff attempt as an Oakland Athletic dives back to first. I am certainly no expert on American Leaguers from the pre-interleague days, but given that I remember pretty much every random player that appeared in 1993 and 1994 Topps, I believe that's Mike Bordick, who wore #14 for the A's at that point.

Depending on how the expanded Postseason plays out, we're looking at a potential AL matchup. The Athletics are a strong team this year, and the White Sox just clinched a playoff spot for the first time in over a decade.

The card back for Pasqua tells us that he hit a lone triple in the 1993 season, and it broke up Danny Darwin's no-hitter in the 8th inning. 

That's how you replace a checklist, folks.

2014 Topps #111 Mark Ellis

There went a quarter of my Eight Men Out list, but gcrl wasn't done there. He found two more cards from 2014 Topps that have a space reserved in my Coors Field Frankenset. First up is Mark Ellis, former second baseman for the Dodgers.

We're three-for-three on cameos so far, as Josh Rutledge appears in the lower right, sliding in with a view of the left field bleachers at Coors Field in the background. Mark Ellis is no stranger to this spot on the diamond, as he played half a season as a Rockie in 2011.

Also observe the improvement in batting helmet technology since the turn of the millennium.

The Dodgers, by the way, visited Denver for the final Rockies home series of 2020. I was at the final home game last year, and it's weird to think back to how normal that felt at the time. I thought I was just going to be away from the ballpark for one winter, not an entire year with at least another offseason yet to come, and that's the best-case scenario.

2014 Topps #654 Jose Tabata

Moving up the checklist to 2014 Topps Series 2, we arrive at one of the final cards that year. 2014 Topps was 661 cards, a significant decrease from the 792 I was used to seeing growing up. On card #654, we find Jose Tabata of the Pirates pointing, possibly appealing a check swing to the first base umpire. 

I'm a bit less certain this is one is a Coors Field card, which I'm basing mainly on the purple color of the dugout roof. You can also see a Pirate in the third-base dugout, and that is indeed the Visitor's side at 20th and Blake. Usually you'll find more purple among the fans when it's a Coors Field card, but this remains my best guess.

We broke our streak of cameos, but I can still tie it in to Pasqua's card. One year after this card was printed, Jose Tabata gained notoriety for breaking up Max Scherzer's perfect game. Whether he was unavoidably hit by a pitch or leaned into it is a matter of debate, but either way, Tabata found himself as the only baserunner that day. Scherzer retired the next batter to preserve the no-hitter anyway, which is still a remarkable feat.

Interestingly, Jose Tabata, who appeared as a pinch hitter that day, played in his last Major League game less than a week later.

2008 Topps Moments & Milestones Black #101-65 Brad Hawpe /25

That's all for the cards I specifically put on my wish list, but gcrl had a couple more tricks up his sleeve. It's been a few years since I've seen something from Topps Moments & Milestones, the unfathomably huge set that becomes unfathomably even huger when you factor in colored parallels.

In a nutshell, each card repeats itself for each counting statistic noted on the front. So Hawpe's card #101 has an example with his first hit, his second hit, his sixty-fifth hit as we see here, all the way up to his 150th hit. The base cards are serial numbered to 150 copies, and this Black parallel has a serial number of just 25. The Red parallels are a 1/1, meaning that Moments and Milestones flooded the market with nearly 13,000 "one-of-ones" when they made this set. They're pretty easy to find if you want one in your collection.

It's just a coincidence, by the way, that Hawpe's 150 hits in 2007 happen to match the base card's print run. Matching the print run to each player's stat total would have made Moments & Milestones at least a little more interesting, and Panini has done exactly that for some of their Donruss parallels.

It would be a tedious and near-impossible task to complete a set like this. I don't know of any collector who has even tried.

In case you're curious, Brad Hawpe's sixty-fifth hit of the pennant-winning 2007 season came on June 19th, a 3-1 win over the Yankees at Coors Field. This card does not tell you that, but it should.

2018 Topps Legends in the Making #LTM-NA Nolan Arenado

Finally, here's a set that's brand new to my collection, a 2018 insert set called Legends in the Making. Nolan Arenado is truly a worthy addition to a set like this, joining other superstars like Lindor, Freeman, McCutchen, and of course Trout. There are a few more players in the set who have largely established their legendary status by now, like Yadier Molina, Joey Votto, and Miguel Cabrera.

The set has an abstract look to it, reminding me of something like Topps Fire or one of the recent Diamond Kings inserts. In Series 1, Topps used an alphabet soup card number, but they remedied that in Series 2, including Charlie Blackmon at card #9.

The card back tells us that Arenado had 41 RBI in just twenty home games during 2017. Since the early 1950s, only Joe Carter and Mark McGwire turned in a similar performance in their home ballparks. 

By the way, if you haven't seen the recent 30 for 30 episode on the McGwire/Sosa home run race, entitled Long Gone Summer, it's definitely worth checking out.

As the Rockies conclude their final home game of 2020, wrapping up a four-game set against the Dodgers by avoiding the sweep, I'll need to spend the next little while finding a couple new cards for my Eight Men Out list. The list of cards I've been given because of that list is becoming quite impressive, and gcrl has been a key contributor over the years.

 

2007: The World Series that got away

Every year, a team loses the World Series. For some teams, that happens a lot, but many of them have the talent and good fortune to go on and win in other years. Others aren't quite so lucky.

In response to Collecting Cutch's contest, in which he asks bloggers to recall a year in which their favorite team didn't win the World Series, the Cardsphere has turned out a batch of excellent posts. There are a few ways to interpret this contest, such as picking a year in which your team had no chance of going anywhere. Finishing in last place with 58 wins is technically one way to "not win the World Series". But entrants tended to pick a season in which their team came oh-so-close to winning it all. Teams like the 2003 Yankees, 1996 Braves, and 1990 Athletics simply lost the Series. The 1980 Dodgers, 2003 Red Sox, 1960 Orioles, and 2016 Red Sox fell varying lengths short of winning the pennant, or short of even making it to the postseason.

The Rockies have never won their division, but they came extremely close in 2018. For Rockies fans, a playoff appearance has always been a question of "will we win the Wild Card?" That's happened five times. And one of those years, they did the improbable and not only advanced to the NLCS, but made it all the way to the World Series.

2007 Upper Deck #304 Clint Barmes

That year was 2007, also the year of one of the least-favorite Upper Deck base sets ever. Clint Barmes was a middle infielder with a few seasons under his belt, but it all came crashing down in 2007. Despite what Upper Deck tells us, that "Barmes has consistently upped his production", his 2007 campaign was one to forget, and one that he spent most of with Triple-A Colorado Springs. He did get called back up in early August, but didn't appear on the Rockies postseason roster until their next Wild Card, in 2009.

Upper Deck did manage to give him a great action shot, which they squeezed in between the columns on both sides. His glove looks a little flat, so it's possible that this lunge didn't quite snag the ball, but we'll never know because the border cuts it off. It's appropriate for this championship that fell just out of reach.

2007 Topps Update #UH209 Troy Tulowitzki SH

A large reason why Barmes had a forgettable 2007 season was this man, Troy Tulowitzki. The talented shortstop was an enormous reason why the Rockies did as well as they did, and he almost won the NL Rookie of the Year award. He made a strong case for Barmes' starting spot, and even managed to turn an unassisted triple play in just his 46th game in the Big Leagues, as this Topps Update card documents (but does not depict). Footage of the actual play shows Tulo wearing a different uniform than the purple jersey.

I've mentioned this before, but I was at the game the day before that rare event happened to occur. It was against the Braves, and while I got to see future Hall-of-Famer John Smoltz pitch, it would have been amazing to see another future Hall-of-Famer, Chipper Jones, line in to such a play. It was my first of four games I attended that season, and the familiar chant of "Tu-Lo!" echoing across Coors Field graced the ballpark for many years to come, even when he visited Denver as a Blue Jay, another game I attended.

2007 Topps Heritage #247 Jamey Carroll

Part of why the 2007 season was so amazing is that even the regular guys did pretty well. Journeyman utility player Jamey Carroll spent two years in Denver, and his trip to the postseason in 2007 was the only one of his career. Even in hitter-friendly Coors Field, he didn't put up stellar numbers, but he did hit a pinch-hit grand slam during my second trip to the ballpark that year, a work outing against the Cubs that the Rockies won in blowout fashion. I had a new camera by then, and snapped a shot of the center field fountains that were activated after that home run.

He also drove in the winning run in the 2007 NL Wild Card Tiebreaker game. More on that later.

The Rockies have put plenty of great fielders on the diamond, and the back of this '58-design Topps Heritage card tells us that Carroll had a stellar .995 fielding percentage in 2006, the best among NL second basemen.

2007 Topps #205 Cory Sullivan

Cory Sullivan was once tasked with patrolling the jumbo-sized center field bordering that fountain, and he did well, as I recall. I don't remember any home run-robbing plays like Ian Desmond flashed the other night, but he had the speed to do it. Longtime readers might remember him as the player who hit two triples in one inning a year prior. He's still well-known among Rockies fans, as he's an in-studio host for the Rockies' TV network.

2008 Topps Heritage #394 Ryan Spilborghs

Ryan Spilborghs shared outfield duties with Sullivan, and "Spilly" remains a fixture in the Rockies broadcast booth to this day, even though his career ended in 2011. He started in center field that day against the Cubs, and I took this picture of him casting a shadow on the outfield grass. I was a real shutterbug back then, and that photo still graces the banner of my blog's Facebook page. It's one of my favorite photos, and I took it from one of the top rows of the center field bleachers.

I tried really hard to only use cards from 2007 in this post, but I couldn't find a card of Spilborghs in the 2007 binder, so I had to advance one year. The 1959 design is one of my favorites, but it took a while for Topps to place him in more than a small number of sets.

I could go on with guys like this all day. Seth Smith, Jeff Baker, Kaz Matsui, Yorvit Torrealba, Willy Taveras. They weren't superstars, but they got on base, got key hits, and came through in the clutch. The Rockies are never going to be a team full of top-dollar free agents, so for them to have success, they need the right mix of average utility players that pull more than their weight and come through at the right time. When that happens, they tend to do pretty well. Exactly that happened last year in the Wild Card Game against the Cubs. In the extra-innings pitchers duel, none other than Tony Wolters got the game-winning hit. ESPN couldn't even say his name right.

2007 Topps Co-Signers Silver Bronze #4a Garrett Atkins w/Jeff Francis /175

The Rockies have always been such an offense-driven club, but their pitching was quite good in 2007. The staff ace was Jeff Francis, who shares some ghostly card space with third baseman Garrett Atkins. This bronze Topps Co-Signers card was sent to me long ago by Wes, before his recent retirement and even before a couple blog name changes.

Atkins was a middle-of-the-lineup guy, and he rewarded the Rockies with 25 home runs in '07. More importantly, Jeff Francis went 17-9 that year, putting him in a four-way tie for second place on the Rockies single-season wins leaderboard.

2007 Topps Update Red Back #UH43 Ubaldo Jimenez

It wasn't until 2010, but Ubaldo Jimenez eventually eclipsed that record, winning 19 games. No Rockie has ever cracked the 20-win mark, but there are pitchers in the rotation right now who are capable of doing just that. Kyle Freeland already has one and it's just the first day of April.

Jimenez had two relief appearances in 2006, but he really got going as a member of the rotation in 2007. He and Tulowitzki gave fans a glimpse of what the Rockies would be like for several years to come. It was a young team. Of all these players so far, Clint Barmes had the most experience as a Rockie, and he was only in his fifth year.

2007 Ultra #57 Brad Hawpe

2007 Fleer Ultra, the final Ultra set to grace the hobby, had a card back very similar to 2007 Upper Deck. There is a ton of empty white space on that back, but room enough for Fleer (really UD by that time) to tell us that the right fielder was "Part of a rising young core of hitters for Colorado". Hawpe hit even more dingers in 2007 than Atkins, with 29, a career high.

I love Coors Field cards, and these lefties really get great ones. When they're at the plate, we can see right into the Rockies dugout, which is more or less an extremely close-up version of what I see when I go to the ballpark. I tend to favor the third-base side, mainly to keep the sun out of my face, but it's also nice to see my team while they're not on the field.

Speaking of right field, this is a good time to bring up the third game I attended in 2007. It was an early-September night game against the San Francisco Giants, my first time seeing them play. If memory serves, I was was there with my dad and sister, and we sat out in right field, above the out-of-town scoreboard and underneath the overhang. That was fortunate, because if I'm thinking of the right game, it was rainy. I don't remember a delay, just a cold and wet night. Brad Hawpe was the closest player on the field to us, and while he had a hit, the Giants won that night. I even witnessed one of Barry Bonds' 762 home runs.

2007 Finest #53 Matt Holliday

Other than Tulowitzki and maybe the two pitchers, casual Rockies fans probably haven't heard of most of these players, or maybe they don't have the context that current broadcasters Sullivan and Spilborghs used to play for the team. We got pretty deep into this post before I got around to the big names, and they're plenty important to the cause, but this is a team sport first and foremost. Mike Trout, who has better stats than anyone by their age-27 season, has played in a grand total of three Postseason games so far. The Angels are on the upswing, but baseball is a sport where a superstar really needs his teammates to shine.

Topps Finest has always been a pretty small set, so only the big names like Matt Holliday get included. The power hitter led the 2007 team with 36 home runs and 120 runs scored, the last one being pivotal to win game 163 and eclipse the Padres to win the Wild Card. It's easily the most controversial play in Rockies history and, to be honest, probably wouldn't pass replay review in this day and age. It's important to note, though, that Garrett Atkins hit a home run in the 7th inning that evening that was incorrectly ruled a double. If replay review existed, the game would have been over in regulation. But no one really talks about that.

Either way, the call in the 13th inning went the Rockies' way, and he remained such a fan favorite that the Rockies brought him back for the last couple months of 2018. He even appeared on last year's postseason roster, going 2-for-8 and bringing a ton of postseason experience to the clubhouse.

2007 Topps Opening Day #81 Todd Helton

And here's that last big name you've been expecting all along, Todd Helton. I've used a lot of 2007 Topps in this post, so here's a look at the white-and-gold interpretation of the filmstrip design, courtesy of Topps Opening Day. Helton, whose number 17 has since been retired by the club, is the most well-known player on this whole team. He had been in the Majors for quite some time before he got a taste of the Postseason, and was an integral part of the Rockies sweeping both the NLDS and NLCS before encountering the buzzsaw that was the Boston Red Sox.

2008 Upper Deck #484 Garrett Atkins

That brings us to the final game I saw in 2007, Game 3 of the World Series. My boss got tickets from a business contact, and decided to take me, the resident baseball fan, to the game. This card is one of the great Coors Field cards, and I dipped into the 2008 binder a second time to find it. That's Hideki Okajima on the hill for Boston, and he faced Garrett Atkins twice, once each in Games 3 and 4. Atkins struck out in Game 3, but took Okajima deep in Game 4, bringing the Rockies to within 1 run of Boston. It would be the last run they'd score that series.

This card might depict that home run, which I think would be preferable for a card of a Rockie, but it might depict that strikeout in Game 3, which would be pretty awesome for this baseball fan. Other than Topps Now, I've only found one card from a game I attended. 50/50 that this is another one, and what a game it was.

Even though they lost, it is a magical experience to watch your team play in a World Series. Yes, I had my camera. And I'll never forget it.

Still, it would be great to win one of these.

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!