The Trading Post #19: Foul Bunt

I wrote not long ago about the practice of pinpointing the date of the photograph that appears on baseball cards. Thanks to a small trade package from William at Foul Bunt, I'm pretty sure I was able to do so on a recent Jordan Pacheco card.

2013 Topps #186 Jordan Pacheco

While I had do to a bit more detective work than if Pacheco wasn't blocking the scores or the pitchers' uniform numbers that appear on the manually-operated scoreboard in right field at Coors Field, I was able to narrow this down to the weekend of August 31st to September 2nd, 2012, based on the four matchups.

From there, it was a matter of reading up on Pacheco's performance that weekend. As usual for a Coors Field series, it was a slugfest, so Pacheco was on base quite a bit. He scored on a couple of home runs, and made it on base numerous times. But based on the detailed scoring, I am going to say that this is from the 4th inning of the Rockies-Padres contest on Saturday, September 1st, 2012.

You'll notice that there's an entry during the bottom of the 4th that Chris Nelson hit a fly ball to deep right field, with Pacheco going to third base. Pacheco stopped at third two other times during that game, but those were both on hits to left field, and the second of those was in the 9th inning, far too late for the other AL games to still be continuing. Furthermore, the Padres' second baseman looks like he's preparing to cut off a throw from right field, so that 4th inning play is my verdict.

I mentioned that this was a smaller package. While it is fun to get flat rate boxes packed full of cards, smaller packages have their place too. They also have the added benefit of not requiring a whole lot of curation on my part to determine what to post about.

2013 Topps Mini #5 Carlos Gonzalez

William threw in a 2013 Topps Mini. Minis I've received in trade before, but not the 2013s. I did buy a box of 2013 Minis from Dave & Adam's a month or so ago, but I did miss the sale on 2014s that Topps ran late last week. 

That one of CarGo (note the card number matching his uniform number) is a nice Coors Field shot, as he's sliding into home against the San Francisco Giants. I did see the Rockies host the Giants in 2012, and Gonzalez did score in that game, so there is a slim chance that it's from the same game my dad and I attended.

That's one thing I'd really like for my collection - a card from a game I attended. It's very likely that I already have some in my collection, but not many of them can be dated so accurately.

Moving on to the oldest card that William sent, it's a shot of The Big Cat, taken during the Rockies' inaugural year.

1994 Donruss Special Edition #66 Andres Galarraga

In 1994, Donruss made these "Special Edition" cards, a partial parallel set of 100 cards. The base set was 660 cards that year, so these gold foil cards are few and far between.

Like three other cards I have from this parallel set, there seems to be some kind of "seam" in the gold foil. I'm not sure of the printing process they used, but there is a very visible shift in the gold foil's shininess about a centimeter from the right edge of the card. I'm not sure how prevalent it is across the whole print run, but it's about 20% of my collection.

Back to some newer stuff, here's a red foil parallel from 2014 Topps.

2014 Topps Red Foil #465 Justin Morneau

It's a nice looking card, one of well over a dozen colored parallels to be found. And it's no Emerald, but there are numerous teams that would look great with this ruby-red background and border.

Morneau made another appearance in this trade package, this time from 2014 Panini Prizm.

2014 Panini Prizm #55 Justin Morneau

You all know I love shiny cards, and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one in this community with that sentiment. Therefore, I am really not sure why no one seems to like Panini Prizm. Sure, the absence of logos is a bummer, but I really don't see what else is not to like. They don't even curl as much as some years of Topps Chrome. Is it because they're spelling "Prizm" with a Z?

Finally, one more of Carlos Gonzalez, which is an insert card from 2014 Topps Update.

2014 Topps Update Power Players #PPA-CGN Carlos Gonzalez

That's a great bat barrel shot of CarGo, but the background of this card is a little unusual. It looks like the wormhole from Doctor Who.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that I've obtained a near-complete Rockies team set from 2014 Update by now, as well as a few inserts. And it's all been via trades. Thanks, William, and I hope you like the Orioles I sent your way!