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 Devilishly Affordable Group Break

A long time ago in this exact galaxy, specifically back in August, Colbey at Cardboard Collections ran an affordable group break that cost only $6. It wasn't the latest and greatest product, but he did have two Fleer products from the mid-2000s on offer, both of which are underrepresented in my collection, so I joined. Who could keep up with all those Fleer releases back then, anyway? As we wrap up 2017, I thought I'd take a look at this stack before the ball drops. At least then I could keep the post in the same calendar year.

2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition #2 Preston Wilson

First up is 2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition (JE), a set I'd never even heard of before, let alone collected. Presumably, there were some relics to be found in this set, but I didn't have the good fortune of nabbing any with my two team slots. Fleer also tied in the player's uniform number into the print run of the Century parallels, adding 100 to their number. Frank Thomas, for example, had a print run of 135. The base cards are nicely color-coded, giving us a clean, if verbose, design. Between the right vertical banner and the set logo, "Focus Jersey Editon" appears twice.

I guess with so many Fleer sets on the market, they really wanted us to know which was which. Don't forget that Fleer also tells us on the fine print in the back. Topps is (sort of) finally doing this, but that is one thing I miss dearly about both Fleer and Upper Deck. We all know the yellow-bordered set is 1991 Fleer, but as more and more sets hit the market, there's a real need for some identification.

In a move which should surprise no one, I selected the Rockies for my primary team slot. Preston Wilson was about to join the Rockies after his first five seasons as a Marlin (save for his two weeks as a rookie Met), coming over in an offseason trade with Charles Johnson and a couple others in return for Mike Hampton and Juan Pierre. The Florida Marlins (yes, before they were known as the Miami Marlins) promptly flipped Hampton, but they kept Pierre and went on to win their second World Series in 2003. Juan Pierre certainly drew the lucky hand that year.

Like most well-known Marlins, Pierre was traded away during their 2005 fire sale, an event that the Marlins seem to hold about once a decade with alarming regularity. Obviously, we're in the middle of one now, and Preston Wilson didn't even survive this one, as he and Jeff Conine were both shown the door of the broadcast booth.

2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition #127 Jose Hernandez

Journeyman infielder Jose Hernandez has only appeared on this blog once before, on another 2003 card, his only year as a Rockie in a long, 15-season career, which immediately followed his only All-Star appearance. Fleer only gave us five years of stats on the back, and a giant, empty gray box below it, leaving us to wonder about his Major League performance dating back to 1991. I vaguely remember his time in Denver, but I can't say I knew how much time he'd spent in the league. I probably have tons of overproduction-era cards of him, but had no idea it was the same guy.

I don't entirely agree with Topps' latest method of only printing the last five years of statistics, especially in this era of Sabermetrics and StatCast. We should be getting more stats, not fewer. But at least they're not tantalizingly filling up the card backs only halfway like Fleer did.

2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition #128 Ben Grieve

The team I ended up with in the random selection was the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the other Florida team that's undergone a name change in their short history. I guess it makes sense for the Marlins to rename since they're no longer the only team in Florida, which makes you wonder how the Angels got away with being the California Angels for so long. That leaves the Rockies, Rangers, Twins, and Diamondbacks as the only teams named after their states instead of their cities. There's a touch of ambiguity in the Yankees and Mets, but the state name came after the city, so I'd file those two under the "city" column.

Going the opposite direction down that path leads to some very odd-sounding names, like the Washington Mariners, Wisconsin Brewers (not to be confused with the Badgers), the Ontario Blue Jays, the Ohio Reds, and the Maryland Orioles.

Maybe that's why Major League teams tend to go for a city name; they sound a bit like colleges otherwise.

But back to the card. Ben Grieve had cooled off after his red-hot start to interleague play against the Rockies, and spent a little time on America's (southern) third coast. As we can see in the lower left corner, Grieve coincidentally wore the number 18, just like the Rockies' Jose Hernandez. And in the checklist, this is exactly one card further down the stack (or up the stack, depending on which direction you hand-collate). He's precariously balanced on his right heel, and happens to be wearing a wrist band that precisely matches the Rays' later colors after they dropped the "Devil".

2005 Fleer Showcase #106 Scott Kazmir ST

The second set was 2005 Fleer Showcase, a wonderfully color-coded set that uses a lot of thin silver foil lines. I had six cards from this set already, so at least I had a little familiarity with this one. Tampa Bay's team was still known as the Devil Rays at this point, keeping that name until 2008, the same year they finally reached the Postseason. In fact, they'd lose the World Series that year, following in the Rockies' footsteps and crossing their name off the short list of teams without a World Series appearance.

None of the base cards that Colbey pulled from 2005 Showcase depicted a Rockie, nor do any of my other six cards, but this is my first from the short-printed Showcasing Talent subset. That makes this an odd set in my collection, one in which I have no Rockies but at least a dozen or so base cards.

I picked Scott Kazmir as the first one to show, a southpaw who led the AL in strikeouts in 2007. I selected him in a Fantasy baseball draft or two, and I even saw him in person when he was an Angel, toeing the rubber against A.J. Burnett when the Yankees visited Anaheim on September 23rd, 2009. That was the only regular season Major League game I've had a chance to see outside of Denver.

Kazmir didn't pitch in 2017, but his name crossed the wire a few weeks ago, as the Dodgers shipped him and a few other former stars off to the Braves for Matt Kemp. Scott Kazmir, Adrian Gonzalez, Brandon McCarthy, and ex-Rockie Charlie Culberson for Matt Kemp sounds like a mega-blockbuster, until you remember that this isn't 2011 anymore.

2005 Fleer Showcase #66 Carl Crawford

Carl Crawford would fit into that transaction perfectly, and the Dodgers might have actually included him if the last of his giant contract didn't finally expire at the end of the 2017 season. The speedy outfielder inked a monster deal with the Red Sox in 2011, but he was almost immediately plagued by injury problems. The Red Sox managed to get the Dodgers to take him off their hands, and the Dodgers finally cut him in 2016, while still owing him tens of millions of dollars.

But once upon a time, he was the best base stealer in the American League, and led the league in triples three years in a row. That was right around the time this card was printed, which tells us that Crawford was one of less than a dozen AL players with over 50 stolen bases, 50 extra-base hits (including 19 triples), and 100 runs scored in a single season. Decades from now, if the game continues to be more power-focused, Crawford's name might come up as one of the last great base stealers with power. Dee Gordon has the speed, but nowhere near the same power. Even over the course of one man's career, the game can change quite a bit.

2005 Fleer Showcase Swing Time #7 Todd Helton

I didn't get any Rockies base cards from '05 Showcase, but I did end up with a hit in this insert of Todd Helton. The angles on this card don't look that different from 2017 Topps, just shifted a bit. It's just about as thick as the base cards, and has that sturdy feel of a premium set. I'm not sure why Fleer felt the need to work the numbers "97" into the Swing Time lettering, but it looks odd, and even more so on the back, where the "N" is written in the preschool-backwards style.

That back uses the same angles, the same noticeable triangle in the center, and the same photo, which is slightly more zoomed in. The upper area has the same partial opacity, which means that Todd Helton's throat is the only area of the photograph that isn't obscured by the design or the paragraph. Stadium Club this is not.

In fact, I think this card helps me understand why so many of you dislike 2017 Topps. The sharp angles detract from the photograph, and just seem to force a lot of odd shapes. Shifting this all to the left a bit wouldn't really help much. But a hit is a hit, and seeing a pre-goatee Todd Helton brings about a sense of nostalgia.

2016 Topps Chrome Pink Refractors #59 Tom Murphy (RC)

Colbey was nice enough to throw in a recent Topps Chrome parallel in addition to the haul from this Fleer group break. Tom Murphy showed up in my last post on another 2016 Topps product, and they both get the Rookie Card logo. As with most Chrome cards, there's a little bit of a curl, but that's expected at this point. This time, the Pink parallel does not get a serial number, but it is a refractor. Topps does not label it as such, but if the light is right, it's easy to tell.

It's surprising how much sharper this photo looks compared to just a decade or so prior. That could have a bit to do with the camera technology, but cards have come a long way since Fleer's relatively recent demise.

Thanks to Colbey for running this group break way back in August, when the thermometer read a wee bit more than 14 degrees Fahrenheit. I hope you all have a healthy and fulfilling 2018, and remember that Opening Day is less than three months away!

The Trading Post #101: Baseball Cards Come To Life! (Part 2: Not Topps)

There's always plenty of digging out to do whenever Bo sends a shipment. The writer of Baseball Cards Come To Life! sent me so much great stuff that I had to split it up into two posts, and it easily could have been three. You already saw the Topps cards, but between Upper Deck, Fleer, and others, I was in Mini Collection heaven.

2008 Upper Deck #483 Matt Holliday

At Coors Field on Friday, the Rockies held a ten-year reunion of 2007's Rocktober team, and Matt Holliday was a key part of that playoff run. He's less remembered for his performance in the 2007 Home Run Derby than for a few other plays, but he's very clearly in AT&T Park representing the National League on this 2008 UD base card, on his way to finishing tied for third with Albert Pujols. In fact, there's so much black and orange on this card that I didn't initially spot the glimpse of the catcher's mitt in the corner.

I don't know the UD designs well enough to recognize this set off the bat (pun not intended), but they moved back to a full-bleed design after the slightly cramped 2007 design, which is one I can recognize on sight. The shutter speed used for this photograph is just a touch too slow to truly capture the moment of impact, but we can see this was one of his first nine outs, since they were using the Gold Ball for the tenth out at that time. The Home Run Derby format has changed since then, and the league uniforms have gotten a bit wilder, but it's still a great event.

2000 Fleer Focus #205 Dante Bichette

Dante Bichette was a fan favorite and a key member of the Blake Street Bombers, but his storied Rockies career was winding down at the turn of the millennium. He was traded to the Reds after the 1999 season, allowing Fleer enough time to update the team logo and colors in 2000 Focus, but not to obtain a new photograph. It's not quite an unfamiliar uniform card, but it's one that kind of screws up your binder organization methods. If we're being truly honest here, I'd file this as a Reds card, despite how important Bichette was to the early days of the Rockies.

2000 Fleer Focus #110 Darryl Kile

The same situation affected Darryl Kile, who ended up on the Cardinals a couple weeks after the Bichette trade. Jose Jimenez was the key piece of that swap, a player who ended up being a rather successful Rockies closer for four seasons.

Fleer ever-so-slightly raised the surface of the player's photograph, applying a matte backdrop on the rest of the card. At least, I think it's raised. The texture is so dramatically different between the foreground and background that it's hard to tell whether it's raised or just has a little more friction when you run your finger across it. I also noticed the plus sign Fleer used as a delimiter between the team and the position, making it look like Kile is a "+Pitcher". It's still better than a comma, in my opinion, since any text that actually contains a grammatical comma screws up CSV files and comma-delimited data.

I'm guessing this is a spring training shot. There are an awful lot of billboards in the background, and your primary pitchers don't generally throw BP. They have guys specifically for that job. Based on the net in front of Kile, that's probably what's going on here, unless it's the Home Run Derby.

2000 Upper Deck Victory #66 Henry Blanco

This isn't as much an unfamiliar uniform as it is an unfamiliar player. I've heard of Henry Blanco before, a Venezuelan who played into his early forties, but I don't recall the one year he spent as a Rockie in 1999. He was a journeyman backup catcher, and he played for every NL West team besides the Giants.

The Rockies continued to clean house in the 1999 offseason, trading Blanco to the Brewers as part of a circuitous three-team trade, netting Jeff Cirillo in the process. That transaction caught even Upper Deck off-guard, who listed him as a Brewer but still pictured him as a Rockie in Coors Field. Obviously this is from the 1999 season, not only because that was Blanco's only season in Denver, but also because the Rockies wore a "CHS" memorial patch on their right sleeves that year, in memory of the tragedy that occurred at Columbine High School.

2003 Upper Deck Vintage #181 Preston Wilson

Wrapping up the uniform/team set mismatch foursome is Preston Wilson, who's listed as a Rockie after a trade in the 2002 offseason. The Marlins got Juan Pierre, who ended up with a World Series ring in 2003 when all was said and done, and also Mike Hampton, whom the Marlins flipped to the Braves a couple days later.

After completely ripping off 1971 Topps with their 2002 Vintage product, in 2003 Upper Deck pretty much Xeroxed 1965 Topps the following year, complete with the little pennant in the lower left.

The thing is, I have no clue what helmet Wilson is wearing here. He had been a Major Leaguer for five seasons, so I doubt they'd have dug up a Minor League shot. And those aren't Marlins colors. It looks like a University of Michigan helmet, but the colors aren't quite right. After a bit of research, it's apparently a throwback to the minor league Miami Marlins, who played a few Triple-A seasons in the late 1950s.

2002 Upper Deck Vintage #270 Larry Walker TC

Speaking of UD Vintage, this is indeed a dead ringer for 1971 Topps, although that set never showed such an, um, intimate-looking moment at second base. In Dodger Stadium, Larry Walker is being tagged out by a Dodgers middle infielder. No idea who that cameo is, so perhaps a Dodger blogger can help out.

This is one of those meta-checklists, one whose own card number appears on the list. Only nine Rockies appear on this checklist, which is about right for a 300-card set. That doesn't come close to covering even a majority of a team's roster, but is just enough for a starting lineup. The top 300 players in the league generally get the most attention in fantasy baseball, assuming a 12-team league with a full lineup, rotation, bullpen, and a few bench spots.

2002 SP Authentic #90 Mike Hampton

I mentioned Mike Hampton a bit earlier, and he showed up in this trade box with a bunting card, always another favorite mini-collection, especially when it's a pitcher. The Rockies spent big bucks to bring him on board, and his 2001 season was pretty good, good enough to become the first pitcher the Rockies would send to an All-Star Game. He even pitched a complete game shutout that year, a night game against the Mets on May 9th, 2001. I remember that one in particular, since my dad and I were watching one of my sister's softball games. My dad had it on the radio and was keeping some of the other parents in the loop about how the Rockies' new ace was doing.

Despite his textbook bunting form, 2002 brought less success, dropping him to a 7-15 record, which led to the Preston Wilson trade mentioned above.

2002 Upper Deck #721 Denny Neagle

The Rockies also spent big on ex-Pirate Denny Neagle before the 2001 season, fresh off a World Series win with the Yankees. He and Hampton were both billed as huge additions to the Rockies rotation, but it didn't quite pan out that way. Neagle actually pitched his last game in 2003 as a Rockie after his third season, despite signing a five-year contract. He missed 2004 due to injury, then started running afoul of the law, causing the Rockies to cancel the remainder of his contract. I don't remember hearing about that one, but he ended up as a cautionary tale to other free agent pitchers on the market.

I do like how this bunting card is basically a mirror image of Hampton's (possibly even from the same photo shoot), but his backwards batting helmet makes it a bit more whimsical. You can even see the Rockies' 10th Anniversary patch on his right sleeve, which was really quite a while ago. They'll be wearing a 25th Anniversary patch next year, and we're sure to see that all over their cards in 2019, the same year Game of Thrones wraps up.

That seems like quite a long time away. Hopefully the Rockies have some more success in the Postseason by then.

2003 Fleer Tradition #165 Juan Pierre

Juan Pierre's Fleer Tradition card from 2003 checks two of the Mini Collection categories. Obviously he's showing the two pitchers above how bunting is done outside a batting practice setting, but he also has a Traded card, listing him as a Marlin (the same trade that sent Preston Wilson to the Rockies), yet they still have him pictured as a Rockie.

Pierre is also sporting the Helmet-over-Cap look, which is exactly what I used to do in Little League. Night Owl wrote a post about this recently as it applied to George Hendrick.

Of course, this is the 1963 Fleer design, but it's OK to plagiarize when it's your own product.

2000 Ultra #44 Neifi Perez

Here's the double play entry into the Mini Collection parade, a high-altitude shot of shortstop Neifi Perez on a Fleer Ultra design that hasn't yet drawn comparisons to recent Stadium Club sets. Rico Brogna gets a cameo, kicking up quite a cloud of dust onto the artificial turf at Veterans Stadium. As it always does on turf, the dirt just weirdly sits there until someone sweeps it up.

I do not miss the days of Astroturf. Only the Rays and Jays still use it, and the Rockies play in those parks so infrequently that I almost never have to see it. Usually it's just on Blue Jays highlights, and that last-place team hasn't had many this year, so that highlight reel usually involves Kevin Pillar, complete with warning track-colored Astroturf.

2002 Fleer Maximum #61 Juan Uribe

Elsewhere around the stadiums of the National League, Juan Uribe practices his short game in Dodger Stadium during batting practice. There's even a bat donut, so I hope Daniel has a copy of this one to feature on his newly-redesigned site. Pretty much everyone who has played the game has putted a baseball at some point in their lives. Definitely an activity in Little League for when we're waiting for our parents to pick us up after practice.

I think modern cards could use a few more shots of BP, if only to illustrate how much these guys have to practice honing their trade. It's almost becoming its own Mini Collection.

I've written about Fleer Maximum before, and this one is in noticeably better condition than I've seen before. This one didn't fall victim to being stuck to the card on top of it, but one of the corners has a slight ding, and the purple area near the top is getting a tiny bit chipped. It surprises me how fragile this set is, despite the thick card stock.

1995 Ultra Gold Medallion #159 Eric Young

As tough as Gold Medallion parallels are to pull in mid-'90s Fleer Ultra, the generosity of my fellow bloggers has me pretty well on the way to completing the Rockies team set. Young might have skied one here, but it looks awfully similar to his leadoff home run in the first-ever Rockies home game.

It's really quite fitting, isn't it? After 25 seasons of Rockies baseball and the reputation the stadium has, it makes perfect sense that a contact-hitting second baseman launched one out to left-center in their first at-bat in Denver. Lesser known is the fact that he also hit two in their final home game that season. Those two, plus the famous Opening Day shot, marked the only three homers he had all season.

By the way, that final game was just the second major league game I attended. We sat in the movable left field stands at Mile High Stadium on a sunny fall day, and even though I was just 9, I remember it like it was yesterday. I still have one of those miniature bats my parents bought as a souvenir, and you can count me twice in the record-setting attendance of 4,483,350, which stands to this day.

And I helped.

1993 SP #221 Joe Girardi

Joe Girardi caught that game, and he practically looks like a kid in this shot, quite different from how he appears as the current skipper of the New York Yankees. Usually when I see him these days, the veins are bulging out of his neck as he reads some umpire the riot act.

Also, if MLB really wants to shorten the time of games, they really ought to just automate the calling of balls and strikes. I guarantee the time that pitchers, catchers, batters, and managers have spent this season arguing balls and strikes drastically offsets any time saved from the automatic intentional walk.

Anyway, the blue nametag that Girardi is wearing reminds me of a particular Curtis Leskanic card that Bo sent in our previous trade. Rather than a series of numbers, Joe actually wrote his name on the sticker. This was to help out Bryn Smith, who handed out the nametags in spring training, according to the back of the card. Yes, Bryn Smith was briefly a Rockie at the end of his career, joining Dale Murphy and Charlie Hough as they lent veteran expertise to the MLB's shiny new expansion clubs. Smith even started the famous home opener, and earned the first "W" in Rockies history.

In looking at that Leskanic card, I'm betting that Upper Deck dug into the archives for their 1995 Collector's Choice set. It's probably from the same photo shoot as Girardi's. The design of the name tag is precisely the same, so unless the Rockies kept a Costco-sized pack of them at Hi Corbett Field throughout the early '90s, I bet we're looking at the same day on cards two years apart.

1995 Studio #149 Joe Girardi

I've mentioned the 1995 Studio set before, and even shown later Studio cards that were likely influenced by it, but I think this is the first time I've actually featured this credit card-themed set on the blog before.

Studio did a great job with this one. Naturally, the facsimile signature on the back goes right where you'd expect it to, and some of the lettering on the front is raised. It's probably not enough relief to get an imprint with one of the old ka-chunk machines, but the hologram and "MLB Member since" features pretty accurately represent what we carry in our wallets.

Of course, the parallels are gold, but that was also when a "gold" credit card was the top of the pile. Now we have diamond, platinum, sapphire, etc.... From there, who knows where it will go? Black Opal? Meteorite? Maybe the banks should reach out to the Topps Colored Border Parallel team for ideas. Because I'd totally carry a Snow Camo credit card.

1997 Cracker Jack #10 Gary Sheffield

As with the Topps stack, there were some unlicensed and Fleer minis as well. This tiny Cracker Jack card features Gary Sheffield, and is just a hair wider than the Cracker Jack Ballplayers reproduction set from a few years earlier. Obviously there is no logo on Sheffield's cap, and the Marlins had moved away from the radioactive turquoise color of their first couple seasons. He's just listed as a player for "Florida".

It's really a small card, and a bit difficult for adult hands to work with. I collected all three years of Topps Micro once upon a time, but I find them rather tricky to sort through now. I imagine collecting postage stamps would be like this, and you have to be careful not to let your hand cramp up. Fortunately, it's just a 20-card set, so it can't cause too much strain.

2003 Fleer Double Header #219-#220 Eric Chavez / Miguel Tejada

2003 Fleer Double Header #219-#220 Eric Chavez / Miguel Tejada (Unfolded)

I doubt I've seen even half of the sets that were released in the early 2000s. There were a ton, and it would have been a lot to keep up with even if I had been regularly collecting at the time. Apparently, I had a base card from 2003 Fleer Double Header in my collection already, but I had never seen these "Flip Cards" from higher up in the checklist. Eric Chavez is the main subject here, but if you flip it up at the fold (right about at belt level), you'll reveal Miguel Tejada leaning to his right to catch a popup.

Interestingly, both Chavez and Tejada have separate card numbers, even though this is just one piece of paper. That's something I've never seen before. Bo sent a few others from this set, and it seems like it's hit-or-miss whether the photographs line up perfectly. On the Rangers' card, even the pinstripes are just off a hair. But Chavez' body proportions on this one look a bit strange.

2002 Fleer Authentix #115 Todd Hollandsworth

Todd Hollandsworth, the last of the Dodgers' five consecutive Rookies of the Year, doesn't show up as a Rockie very often. But he was a capable outfielder, spending more time in purple than for any team besides those Dodgers. Fleer Authentix, a new brand in 2002, made the most of his Rockies tenure with this color-coded card patterned after a ticket stub. The border is raised, or really more like embossed, since you can see the imprint on the back.

This "ticket" is for the Rockies' 2002 home opener against the Houston Astros, a game they lost with Denny Neagle on the mound, facing off against Roy Oswalt, who would later join the Rockies to close out his career with a dismal 0-6 record in 2013. The game did take place at Coors Field, but some of the seat information Fleer came up with on this card makes me laugh.

I'm supposed to enter at Gate 27, which sounds like an awful lot of entry points to monitor. Coors Field really just has five. Once inside, I need to navigate to the nosebleed row of 115. Where is this game being played, the Pentagon? Not even the Big House in Ann Arbor has that many rows. Once I've ascended into the stratosphere, I only need to climb across a few people to seat 6. I'm unlikely to spill any beer on those people, since I probably either dropped it or drank most of it on that trek to row 115. Perhaps I'll have to send my Sherpa back to the Gate 27 concession stand for another one.

I suppose the row number does match the card number, meaning there are another 20 rows behind me full of exhausted fans, thanks to Andy Pettitte's card. Mercifully, from that point on, Fleer just marked the ticket area with "Future Star" for the final 15 cards.

2003 Fleer Authentix #59 Jeff Bagwell

Fleer got their act together for the following year's set, sending me to the much more plausible location of Section 291, Row 12, Seat 5 inside the newly-renamed Minute Maid park. That stadium had previously been called Astros Field in 2002, after Enron returned its naming rights to the park following their well-publicized collapse for the bargain price of $2.1 million. Fortunately, that transaction took place early enough for the Enron name not to disgrace the inaugural 2002 Authentix set. Having to trudge up 95 rows in a place named Enron Field would just be too much to bear.

At first, I wasn't sure why Bo included this card. Maybe he just needed to offload a few Astros, like that Colin McHugh card in part 1. But then I noticed the Astros opened their 2003 season against the Rockies, as noted in the lower right, just above the quasi-perforation on the "ticket stub". The Rockies lost that one too, with Bagwell himself launching two homers off of Jason Jennings.

1998 UD3 #166 Dante Bichette EE

This has been a long post written over two sittings, and I just don't have it in me right now to figure out a fractured set I've never seen before. Upper Deck. Copper. That's about it.

1993 Score #428 Dante Bichette

I'll wrap up this 115-row marathon with Dante Bichette, who appears on this 1993 Score card with a picturesque Colorado mountain, similar to the card backs of 1993 Leaf and the Rock Solid Foundation card from 1993 Upper Deck.

The newly created Rockies and Marlins didn't make it into every 1993 main set, especially not wearing their actual uniforms. Fleer and Donruss both had the new logos but used their previous uniforms, although Fleer remedied that with Final Edition. Upper Deck had them in uniform in the main set, as did Topps Series 2, but all this time I thought Score missed the party.

I should have known better, since I do have a Marlins card of Dave Magadan in my binders. And this set has been in my collection for a very long time. I remember getting a pack of it for Hanukkah that winter. But after all this time, I finally know there are 1993 Score cards depicting Rockies. It's amazing I've never seen one until now, and I'm interested to see what else is out there.

Anyone know where I can score some Score?

The Trading Post #90: Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary

Brian of the blog Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary has sent me cards a bunch of times by now. He delivered again recently with another excellent trade package. On Superb Owl Sunday, (three hours to kickoff as I began this post, and what a comeback, Patriots!), I got to thinking a bit about how accurate Brian's blog title really is. This whole hobby is pretty much built on what each of us is individually drawn to. From which teams we root for (which admittedly has a lot to do with our geographic location), to what we think is appropriate in a baseball card set, it really comes down quite a bit to personal taste. Too many inserts? Not according to some. Card #7 shouldn't exist? Depends on who you ask. Yankees or Red Sox? Let's not even go there.

Except Stadium Club. Stadium Club is objectively awesome. There, I said it.

But what I found in this trade allowed me to come up with several arbitrary categories and place cards that I subjectively found awesome into them. There's a little more structure in this post than usual, and I hope you like what's to follow.

Category #1: Jon Gray Rookie Cards

2016 Bowman's Best #45 Jon Gray (RC)

Jon Gray, doing his best long-haired Noah Syndergaard impression, is certainly worthy of inclusion in the small Bowman's Best set. I haven't opened any yet, but the nameplate and team name at the bottom looks a lot to me like 2017 Topps Series 1, a recent release which has been all over the Cardsphere this week. With this much going on in the design, it's hard not to find similarities to something. And that is one monster-sized Rockies logo looming in the background.

For the first time since their inaugural season, the Rockies are making some slight tweaks to that logo. The logo itself isn't changing, but they are switching to a different shade of their trademark purple. My eye didn't pick it up, but apparently the jerseys, hats, and printed logos didn't look that consistent in various applications. So now the Rockies purple logo looks more...purpley.

Branding is important, people.

2016 Topps Bunt #141 Jon Gray (RC)

I really don't know what the rules are for the MLB Rookie Card logo, but Gray's cards in both Bunt and Bowman's Best get the treatment. And others did too. But some didn't. So it seems like it had to be a 2016 card, but not all his 2016 cards are considered rookie cards. I suppose it's just as well, as the RC logo would have marred that beautiful Stadium Club card sent by Tom.

But it seems like a pretty arbitrary rule to me. Especially since there is only one company making licensed cards these days.

Either way, it's good to see him appear in so many sets. That is a mark of success. Or at least hype. But a 16-strikeout shutout performance seems to indicate that he's the real deal.

Category #2: Uniform Numbers

2016 Topps Update #US286 Gerardo Parra

To me, this looks more like Trevor Story's card than Gerardo Parra's. Cameos are like that sometimes. It's from 2016 Topps Update, and Story was quite a newsworthy player during the first half of 2016. I'm excited for the 2017 season for a lot of reasons, but seeing Story take his place on the left side of the infield again is definitely one of them. I'd like to see this one zoomed out a little more so we could get the full view of the double-high-five, but it's a nice card and seems minimally affected by the smoke effect on 2016 Topps.

I couldn't tell you what number Parra wears (11? Nope, 8). but I hope to see Story's #27 at Coors Field for a long time to come. He wasn't the first to wear it; a slew of players I've never heard of or didn't know spent any time as a Rockie wore it in the early days. Garrett Atkins had it for a while, as did Todd Hollandsworth. But it's Story's now. And you never know when a player will come along who's the last to wear a number.

Which brings me to my next card.

1995 Collector's Choice SE #208 David Nied

David Nied, or Dave, as he's called on this Upper Deck Special Edition card, was the first-ever Rockie, selected first overall in the 1992 Expansion Draft. The Rockies had high hopes for him, but he ended up being a disappointment. Not the first time the Rockies would have trouble like that in a draft. Selecting pitching prospects that don't pan out is essentially a founding principle for this team. But Nied did wear #17, the only other Rockie to do so before it was turned over to Todd Helton.

Helton, of course, wore it proudly for seventeen seasons, coincidentally. And other than the league-wide retirement of Jackie Robinson's #42, it's the only number out of circulation at Coors Field. But the other major sports teams in Denver still use it, as neither the Nuggets, Avalanche, nor Broncos have had a superstar suit up with #17.

Yet.

Category #3: Weird Fleer Cards

2001 Fleer Legacy #82 Todd Helton

Normally I'm a fan of minimalism. No need for a lot of extra stuff or over-the-top design elements just for their own sake, sort of like that Bowman's Best card. But it has to be done right. That sparse, sort of Zen look really takes a lot of intent to get right.

This just looks lazy to me. If I had five minutes to design a baseball card, it would probably come out looking something like this. Solid white background, rectangular headshot that looks paperclipped on, an action shot, a one-letter logo in the corner with a drop shadow, and a basic all-caps font in two different colors.

I could literally do this in Microsoft Word.

It reminds me a little bit of that Jeff Francis autograph card, the one with all the empty space. But this is, frankly, bad. And worse, the back doesn't look any better. It has a couple shades of gray, the Rockies team logo that's oddly chopped in at least three places, and that same amateur Fleer logo. L is for Legacy.

Fleer was putting out an absolute ton of sets in the early 2000s, and there are only so many resources to go around. I don't think I've ever bashed a card design this harshly. But wow.

2002 Fleer Premium #91 Jeff Cirillo

Fleer got their act back together the next year, continuing their Premium set for a second and final year. It's a nice black-bordered set with a classic frame and a little silver foil. And a pretty good action shot of Cirillo covering third against the San Francisco Giants. It was likely taken in the then-new Pacific Bell Park (later SBC Park, now AT&T Park), reminding us of the AT&T breakup, and the reconsolidation of many of those once-separate entities.

So what's weird about it? Well, if you look closely, Cirillo is listed as a member of the Seattle Mariners. It's clearer on the back, as the Mariners logo and their sea green color are present. Or maybe it's aqua. Turquoise? Teal? I don't know. Us men are notorious for being able to recognize only about a dozen colors.

Category #4: Shiny Dante Bichette Cards

1996 Upper Deck Predictor Retail Exchange #R42 Dante Bichette W

Thanks to Dante Bichette's MLB-leading 128 RBIs in 1995, Upper Deck added him to their Predictor set the following year, a 120-card insert set (split into Retail and Hobby editions with 60 each). If the player pictured led the league in the listed statistic during any calendar month in 1996, the card could be sent in to Upper Deck for a 10-card foil parallel redemption set.

Believe it or not, Dante Bichette really did lead the league in RBIs in June 1996, with 39, including four in that legendary 16-15 win over the Dodgers on June 30th. His base Retail Predictor card became eligible for redemption, and I am pretty sure this foil parallel (copper-colored, UD's favorite metal) is one of the actual redemption cards. It took quite a bit of research to figure this all out, though. It looks like UD put six wild cards in the set to ensure they'd have something to do with the redemption cards in case no one won, but out of over fifty other Retail Predictor cards, only Bichette, Sammy Sosa, and Jay Buhner actually lived up to the forecast.

It was a similar story with the Hobby Predictor version of this set. Bichette won NL Player of the Month that June, and Roger Cedeño led his category as well. There were numerous players found in both the Retail and Hobby insert sets, but Bichette was the only one to have a winning card in both.

1996 Leaf Limited #48 Dante Bichette

Bichette's stellar 1996 was the subject of his Leaf Limited card that year. This card was printed late enough in the season to mention that Player of the Month award, as well as his first-half RBI lead. He'd slip a little bit in that statistic by the end of 1996, yielding the lead to teammate Andres Galarraga.

There's no copper to be found here, as this isn't an Upper Deck product. But there's a shiny finish, a bit of gold foil, a shot taken in the distinctive Shea Stadium, and a little purple on the edges to round things out.

I always liked him when I was a kid, especially because of that perpetual .310 batting average and how much he excelled with a two-strike count. I'm glad to have a couple more cards of him to remind me of that era and that season.

Category #5: Purple Borders

2013 Topps Opening Day Toys R Us Purple Border #83 Wilin Rosario

As we all know, purple is synonymous with the Rockies. Their new purple is a little closer to what you see in the sea turtle than the border, but no other team in MLB uses it, now that the Diamondbacks abandoned it as an accent color. I'd be happy to share it with Arizona, as I find their dark gray uniforms to be hideous.

If you've finished your doctorate on Topps border parallels, you'll know that purple borders are a Toys 'R' Us exclusive. That's true for 2013 Opening Day, at least, as well as numerous other releases in the past few years. I haven't been in a Toys 'R' Us in ages. In fact, I couldn't even tell you where the nearest one is anymore. So these purple bordered cards are not something I run across very frequently. Neither Target nor Wal-Mart got exclusives in this Opening Day set, making this a pretty easy rainbow to complete, not counting the printing plates. Thanks to Brian, only the serial-numbered Blue parallel is missing from that rainbow.

The photo is similar to his shot in 2014 Stadium Club (mmmm, Stadium Club), but he's much more excited about the play that just occurred in that set, and he decided to switch over to Wilson for his chest protecting needs instead of All-Star.

2016 Donruss Optic Purple #9 Carlos Gonzalez DK

Prizm is such a resounding success in the marketplace that Panini decided to make a second shiny set, Donruss Optic. Like Donruss sets of old, the first thirty cards or so are part of the Diamond Kings subset. They do a darn good job with this unlicensed set, especially when it's the purple-bordered parallel. It's definitely a different shade of purple than Rosario's card, so maybe those color guys know what they're talking about.

There are a couple of spots, like the border around CarGo's action shot, that catch the light with a touch of rainbow finish, and this thick card feels good to hold. It's pretty similar to the average Donruss card that's come out since 2014, but I do see a smidgen of 1972 Topps' tombstone design in the frame.

The back could use some work, though. It's mostly gray, roughly the same shade as those Diamondbacks uniforms. It's a little hard to tell if the gray splotches that spill into the white areas on the back are part of the design or just smudges. And the letters are jammed really close together in his paragraph, quoting him as "Ijustwanttoapplythatonthefieldandbethe" before it wraps to the next line as "player everybody wants me to be." Hard to tell if there is a miniscule space between those words, but it's certainly not consistent between the two lines. Maybe someone botched a Find & Replace in their text editor.

At least they still follow what Upper Deck, Fleer, and Pacific did ages ago and told me what set this is part of in the fine print. For the love of the hobby, Topps, start doing that.

Category #6: Awesome Insert Cards

1995 Stadium Club Power Zone #PZ6 Andres Galarraga

Of course there's another Galarraga card in 1995 Stadium Club that I've never seen before. Topps does like this "Power" theme, as we saw in my previous post. Galarraga is generating so much power here that he can simply fling the bat and cause a significant explosion. Who needs TNT when you have a Blake Street Bomber?

The back provides 1994 stats for his performance at home as well as in five other parks. This was before Interleague Play, so all the sites are National League stadiums, some of which aren't there anymore, or at least aren't hosting baseball. Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium remain, but the Padres, Braves, and Marlins have new places to call home now.

This isn't the first time I've thrown this fact out there, but as new as Coors Field is, having opened in just 1995, it is already the third-oldest park in the National League.

2016 Topps Opening Day Superstar Celebrations #SC-18 Carlos Gonzalez

Sadly, the Rockies are usually out of the pennant race by the end of September. But they usually perform well enough to play spoiler in the NL West, usually against the Giants. April and May are full of hope and a strong performance, but by the time July and August roll around, things start to take a turn for the worse. By September, when the playoff picture becomes clearer and the pressure is off, things pick up again, but it's too little too late.

2007 notwithstanding, you can pretty much set your watch to it.

Regardless, none of that stopped Carlos Gonzalez from hitting a walk-off homer against the Dodgers on September 26th, 2015. Charlie Blackmon was sure to empty the Powerade cooler onto CarGo during his post-game interview, a moment that's forever documented on this Topps Opening Day insert card.

2014 Topps Opening Day Stars #ODS-9 Troy Tulowitzki

In breaking with the tradition I've set in this post, here's a third card in this category. When Opening Day is in the mix, there's just no telling what will happen. It seems like a long ago memory, but Troy Tulowitzki was once a Rockie, and a stellar performer on Opening Day. Not just anyone gets the 3D treatment on a Topps card. I opened quite a bit of 2014 Opening Day, but this Tulo card had eluded me until now. I'd just like to see a little more purple on it.

Category #7: Hits

2010 Topps Pro Debut Prospect Autographs #PDA-CB Charlie Blackmon S2 (AU)

It's strange to see Charlie Blackmon without that big bushy beard. Stranger even than seeing him in a minor league uniform. Until a few years ago, the Tulsa Drillers were the Double-A affiliate of the Rockies, and Blackmon progressed nicely through the Rockies' farm system and his 2010 season in Tulsa.

This is a candidate for Category #2, but that sticker auto helps put it into a category of its own. Not long after this card was printed, I started seeing Blackmon jerseys pop up at Coors Field. At the time, I found that odd. I had heard the name, but for some reason thought he was a front-office guy or part of the ownership group or something. I didn't know the farm system or the prospects even five years ago nearly as well as I do now. Part of the reason is that I almost never buy minor league cards, but also that the pipeline wasn't as promising back then.

2008 Upper Deck Spectrum Spectrum Swatches #SS-GA Garrett Atkins /99 (MEM)

In case you didn't believe me that Garrett Atkins wore #27, here's proof. This UD Spectrum relic card is quite an attractive shade of blue, maybe a dark cyan? The flattened "S" that makes up the Spectrum logo is barely visible as a pattern in the blue area, which looks sort of like those SP logos on some cards that Fuji sent to me. Not that the scanner picked those up either.

I do enjoy relic cards, especially when they have a low print run like this. It's a bonus when the swatch matches the jersey in the photograph, but that is never a sure thing. Sometimes these even have pinstripes, which is not something that every team's collector has a chance to find. Since this is a 2008 card, this is probably from the 2007 season, meaning there's a chance this is from a pretty special period in Rockies history.

2007 UD Masterpieces Captured on Canvas #CC-GA Garrett Atkins (MEM)

And that's not one, but two Garrett Atkins relic cards! This black swatch looks absolutely spectacular on this framed UD Masterpieces card. If I had to pare down my collection to just a handful of sets, this would definitely make the cut. I'd almost say these are the pinnacle zenith peak of a painted card design, what Diamond Kings was always trying to be.

Especially because they spelled "masterpieces" correctly.

Category #8: Green Topps Finest Cards

1994 Finest Superstar Samplers #35 Andres Galarraga

You knew this was coming, didn't you?

1994 Finest has made plenty of appearances around here, but this happens to be a Superstar Sampler parallel, which I've never heard of before. I know about the pre-production versions, and of course there is the base version. All I need is the refractor to complete the rainbow.

Apparently Topps picked 45 cards from the Finest base set, printed up these partial parallels with a circular red seal on the back, and included them as promos in Baker's Dozen varieties of 1994 Topps factory sets, along with a similar Bowman and Stadium Club card of the same player. I vaguely remember my old Beckett magazines referring to those factory sets, but I had no idea what made them so special. I've never seen a Bowman or Stadium Club Superstar variety, or at least if I did, I never flipped it over. I'll have to check my 1994 binders now that I know these exist.

Good thing I'm not a Griffey collector. I'm sure his card from this set sells for some ridiculous amount of money. Probably not the $2,000 that his 1993 Finest Refractor goes for, but still more than I'd care to spend.

2014 Finest Gold Refractors #30 Carlos Gonzalez /50

Supply and demand is real. There are about five times as many 1993 Finest Refractors of Ken Griffey Jr. as of this Gold Refractor, but this one goes for about $8 on eBay. Which is still a lot for a modern card. But I doubt this one will end up in a safe deposit box. Incidentally, The Junior Junkie, proud owner of one of those rare Griffeys, originally sent me the base version of this card. There isn't as much green in this one as you see in 1994 Finest, but there's a bit, and it's enough to earn a spot in this final category.

I feel like I have a pretty good memory, and my mom is often in awe of the encyclopedic knowledge I seem to have about this sport and the hobby. I have no idea how some people remember who sent them each card in their collection, where they got it, even how much they paid. I can remember that for my most special cards, but I had to look through my past blogs to figure out where the base card came from. I had originally thought it was Julie, who recently made a triumphant return to the Cardsphere, but that was an incorrect guess. Unless she sent a second copy.

I think to a larger degree than most of us would care to admit, these blogs are for us just as much as they are for our audience. There were a lot of great cards in this trade, and I'm sure I'll be referring back once The Trading Post #180 rolls around.