The Trading Post #159: The Collector (Part 2: Not Topps)

The majority of what I found in a box that was sent to me from The Collector consisted of non-Topps products. Part 1 had all those Topps products, and here in part two we have Fleer, Upper Deck, and even a little Pacific. I particularly enjoy when cards tend to fall into nice pairings, like they did in one of Nick's trades last month. That will happen here once again.

Category 1: Score Gold Rush

1994 Score Gold Rush #336 Alex Cole

After more than 300 posts, surely I've shown at least a couple thousand cards by now. Because of that, I generally check my past posts to ensure I haven't scanned a card before. This Alex Cole card is new, but I'm surprised at how often I've seen 1994 Score Gold Rush. Score was one of many brands in a crowded pre-Strike marketplace, but they were affordable and thus quite common. Their one-per-pack Gold Rush parallels took full advantage of the foil craze that was going on in the early 1990s, and they're really quite stunning. The downside is that the foil has a tendency to peel slightly, and unlike every late-'90s Topps Finest card I own, that's not something I'd like to see happen here.

Alex Cole, an outfielder, was known for wearing goggles like these in the field. You can see them on pretty much all of his cards, but I never saw a close-up so clear that you could tell the brand. I'm no sunglasses expert, and I've never heard of Cazal before, but this German brand is still out there.

This being Score, there's a lengthy write-up on the back, which tells us that he joined the Rockies in the 1992 Expansion Draft, that he platooned with Chris Jones in 1993, and that he had never hit a home run in MLB. He signed with the Twins for the 1994 season, and hit five home runs for them over the two shortened seasons of 1994 and 1995. The center fielder was definitely more of a speed guy, swiping 148 bags in his career.

1995 Score Gold Rush #588 Jayhawk Owens

Gold Rush was carried over for 1995, and unlike the base cards which have a bunch of green dots in the design, the Rookie subset uses a very thick black border. The last time I showed a card of Jayhawk Owens, or simply "J." as he prefers it, it was from 1993 Topps Gold, the set that Gold Rush was obviously created to compete with. 

Even though he's in this subset, Owens wasn't really a rookie at this point. He had playing time in both 1993 and 1994, and ended up playing 130 games over his four seasons with the Rockies. He, too, joined the Rockies via the Expansion Draft, and wound up with eleven career homers.

Category 2: Inaugural Rockies Pitchers

1997 Circa #360 Steve Reed

Since we've already seen two players who were among the first-ever Rockies, here are a couple more who shared the field, or even a battery, with the guys from Score Gold Rush. First up is Steve Reed, appearing on 1997 Circa, one of many Fleer/Skybox brands with a very loud design. In addition to these in-your-face graphics, Fleer put a quote from Reed right on the front. He says, "You can score as many runs as you want here [Coors Field], and it still might not be enough unless you have a pitcher who can go in and stop the bleeding."

Wise words from someone in a position to know. He suffered a lot of blown saves in pre-humidor Coors, but ended up with quite a few wins on the other side of it. I harp on this statistic a lot, but he had 33 wins as a Rockie despite never starting a game. The card back mentions his 22 holds (presumably in 1996), a statistic that refers to entering a save situation while preserving the lead for the next pitcher. Set-up men earn a lot of these. Scot Shields, who set up for Francisco Rodríguez on the Angels, had a ton of them. It's sort of related to what we might call a "high-leverage situation" today. 

The only problem on the card back is that Steve Reed isn't pictured at all.

1997 Circa #360 Steve Reed (Reverse)

I'm pretty sure that's Kevin Ritz, a starter. Reed's trademark mustache is missing, and that's clearly a "T" on the back of this pitcher's uniform.

1997 Score Premium Stock #204 Armando Reynoso

Another pitcher that handed off to Steve Reed in the early days of the Rockies was Armando Reynoso. For 1997, Score omitted a photo on the card back to leave lots of room for various statistical breakdowns and splits, the Pinnacle authenticator box, and the usual novella you find on Score cards. This one lists out all six pitches in his arsenal. There are two types of curveballs, the usual fastball/slider/change-up combo, and even a forkball, the forgotten cousin of the split-fingered fastball which pretty much no one throws anymore. They also mention his masterful pickoff move.

I picked this card as a comparison to Bruce Ruffin's card from last week so you could see the difference between the Series 1 and Series 2 versions of 1997 Score parallels. Ruffin's card was from the Series 2 Reserve Collection, while this is the Series 1 Premium Stock. It's the same base set, just different flavors of parallels. This is a really thick card, probably the thickest Score card I've ever seen.

Ruffin, by the way, was another inaugural Rockie.

Category 3: Pitchers Who Rake

2003 Ultra Gold Medallion #26 Mike Hampton

It's possible that we're already into the age of the universal DH, not realizing when pitchers hit in the 2019 World Series that it might have been the end of an era. We were all so caught up with Baby Shark back then and didn't realize that #PitchersWhoRake might never trend again. 

Pitchers, of course, can hit. Sometimes. I can't remember whose blog I saw it on, but I was recently made aware of Craig Lefferts's walk-off home run in 1986. And let's not forget Bartolo Colon's glorious homer at Petco Park. Here we have five-time Silver Slugger Mike Hampton on a die-cut Gold Medallion card. Note that he's running the bases, not a common sight at all for a pitcher. 

2003 Donruss #279 Jason Jennings

Jason Jennings didn't do quite as well at the plate, but the card back of this 2003 Donruss issue does remind us that he hit a home run and pitched a complete game shutout in his debut game on August 23rd, 2001, something no one had ever done before. 

Donruss gave him a great card in 2003, a Coors Field card that will slot in to one of the many empty slots in my Coors Field frankenset. It's hard to tell, but that's a more youthful-looking forest back behind the center field wall.

Category 4: Rockies at the Plate

2004 Upper Deck #259 Chris Stynes

I've never once claimed to be an expert in 2004 Upper Deck. I've only shown the set on this blog once before. But two things about this card caught my eye. First is obviously Chris Stynes's batting stance, consistent with a Fleer card from the same year, the only other time Stynes has appeared on this blog. It's the typical view of a Coors Field card, showing one of the dugouts. I'm guessing the Dodgers were in town then.

Second, upon much closer inspection, I spotted the tiny photo of the Coors Field clocktower in the purple area on the bottom. That's what Upper Deck used on vertical cards, compared with the right field upper deck (not an accident, I'm sure) on horizontal Rockies cards.

It's a very purple card on the back, part of one of the more heavily color-coded sets to come out of Upper Deck. There are no more stadium photos, but there is a headshot of Stynes, and a short paragraph about his first career grand slam on June 19th, 2003, which UD incorrectly listed as June 20th.

2010 Upper Deck #176 Ryan Spilborghs

Ryan Spilborghs was a fan favorite during his playing days, but we've really come to enjoy him as part of the Rockies TV crew. He was remote during the 2020 regular season, and the broadcast team would periodically check in on him at home to see how his barbecuing was going. I liked him when he was a player, and now that he and Cory Sullivan, whom we saw in Part 1, are on the broadcast team, I've grown to like him even more.

But there aren't many broadcaster cards out there, so we'll have to go back to his playing days to find a card. Like Stynes, he's a righty, but this angle gives us a look at the opposite dugout. Notice how they changed the color of the dugout roof over the years.

Unlike many cards in 2010 Upper Deck, UD did a reasonably good job of obscuring any official team logos on Spilly's card, something they needed to do after losing their MLB license. If they had taken this much care on other cards in Series 1, they may not have ended up in legal trouble. Still, there's a little glimpse of the CR logo on the inset headshot at the bottom, so that might be enough to put this out of compliance.

On the back, Upper Deck was sure to mention the great highlight of Spilborghs's career, his walk-off grand slam on August 24th, 2009, the first in Rockies history. The TV crew spent plenty of time on that highlight this year, as Charlie Blackmon hit the second in September. Same part of the park, too, but over what's now a higher wall.

Category 5: Great Photos

1997 Ultra #440 Bill Swift

As I usually do when I put these pairings together, I'm going to break my own rules a little and add a third card to this category. I had the idea of making another oddly specific category, but I realized I had already shown the card in question once before. So we'll start with Bill Swift nursing his shoulder. It's from '97 Fleer Ultra, and it gives us a less-glamorous look at the life of a right-handed pitcher. 

You'll want to flip the card over to get a couple images of him on the mound. You'll find two there, arranged in a foreground and background style similar to 1993 Flair.

2000 Pacific Ruby #150 Neifi Perez

Here's that Pacific card I promised, and yes, of course it has red foil. Red, or "Ruby" foil, as Pacific calls it here, has become as rare as a forkball. It's a good color accent to this Phillies player's uniform, who is doing his best to make Neifi Pérez's life difficult. Normally this would be a difficult cameo to pin down, but fortunately, the Phillies helpfully wear their uniform numbers on their sleeves. #6 on the Phillies in 1999 was Doug Glanville, who recently appeared here on a Pacific card of his own.

On the back, below some very tiny statistics, is a short paragraph about Pérez's day on June 6th, 1999. Besides being the 55th anniversary of D-Day, that was also the day that he went 3-for-5 with a triple, a home run, and two RBI. That was a game against the Brewers, just a year after they switched to the National League.

My idea was to make a whole section for "Phillies Cameos at Second Base", but realized that a particular Mike Lansing card already entered my collection in 2015. Rather than show a duplicate, I just lumped this one in here. And it's not the last cameo we'll see today.

2000 Upper Deck #378 Terry Shumpert

Terry Shumpert makes another appearance a little more than a week after his last. The relatively unknown Rockie got a good action photo in 2000 Upper Deck, one of the least-plentiful UD sets in my collection. This is obviously a spring training shot, and the white car in the background reminds me a lot of that famous Luis Alvarado parking lot card in 1973 Topps. I'm not sure which car is behind the athletic Shumpert, but if I had to guess, it might be one of the first-generation Jeep Wagoneers.

Category 6: Oddballs

2010 Pacific Coast League Top Prospects Multi-Ad #7 Esmil Rogers

You don't get a box like this without a few oddballs in it. In addition to a whole deck of MLB Showdown cards, there were a few Minor League cards. Esmil Rogers is one of the few whose name I recognized as an eventual Major Leaguer. The Dominican righty spent part of seven years in the Majors, four with the Rockies. 

Really it was more like six, because his 2009 appearance consisted of a single game in mid-September. That was mentioned on this 2010 MiLB card, as well as his gradual rise through the Rockies farm system. The card back of this PCL card says he's "on a long list of elite Colorado starting pitching prospects". Usually they remain just that, prospects.

From their inauguration through 2014, The Colorado Springs Sky Sox were the Rockies' Triple-A affiliate. That changed in 2015, when the Rockies switched to the Albuquerque Isotopes. The only team that's stayed in the same place as part of the Rockies farm system since the team's inception is the Class-A Asheville Tourists. Rogers pitched there in 2007, going 7-4 with a 3.75 ERA.

1992-93 Ultra #54 Reggie Williams

Our last card isn't really an oddball. It's a Fleer Ultra NBA card, which is of course a major brand. But in my collection, basketball cards are few and far between. I probably have more Minor League cards than NBA cards, to be honest. So that makes this something of a rarity for me.

There were a few of these Denver Nuggets cards nestled at one end of the box, and since basketball is so much more of a contact sport than baseball is, you have lots of opportunities for cameos. The cameo on this card of Reggie Williams is none other than Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley, who was then in his final year with the Philadelphia 76ers.

I certainly don't know NBA jerseys well enough to place this in Denver's McNichols Arena or in The Spectrum in Philadelphia. But boy, did the Nuggets have some great uniforms then. 

Like his teammate Dikembe Mutombo, Williams attended Georgetown for college, and was a freshman when they won the NCAA championship in 1984. College basketball experts can put those pieces together to realize that he was college teammates with Patrick Ewing, and took over as Georgetown's best player once the Knicks drafted Ewing.

Again, not an oddball. I just love Hall-of-Fame cameos no matter what the sport.

And with that, dear readers, I'm caught up on trade posts!

The Trading Post #154: Topps Cards That Never Were (Part 1: Older Rockies)

For nearly a year, I've had a stack of cards on my shelf from Topps Cards That Never Were. Jeremy offered a card from my Eight Men Out list along with some assorted Rockies, and upon receiving them, I immediately knew that what he ended up sending would take several posts to properly cover. There was so much here, and I hope you'll enjoy this journey as much as I did. My current plan is to divide this up into four posts, but who knows, it might require five.

To start things off, we'll look at some Rockies from earlier in the franchise's history, split roughly around the time of their only World Series appearance in 2007.

1996 Select Team Nucleus #4 Dante Bichette / Andres Galarraga / Larry Walker

A three-player acetate insert card from a Pinnacle insert set is as good a place to start as any. The important thing is to start. We all know the mid-'90s were weird, and mid-'90s inserts were even weirder. I have never even heard of this sciency-sounding Team Nucleus insert set, let alone seen one. It's 28 cards in total, one for each team. I imagine there's a Griffey from this set worth as much as a used car.

Each card depicts three of the team's top players, in this case Bichette, Walker, and Galarraga, as noted on the back. Well, actually, it's noted on the back in reverse order, since it's a mirror image on that side. 

Something about this bothers me though. The one in the middle, Walker, well, that doesn't really look like Larry Walker to me. I could be wrong, and the wraparound sunglasses make it hard to be sure, but that looks a little more like Vinny Castilla, if I had to guess. Walker didn't usually go clean-shaven, and his hair color is lighter than this. On the other hand, the crease above his chin might mean it's Walker after all, but it's the least Larry Walker-looking photo of Larry Walker I can remember.

Either way, they were the core of the Blake Street Bombers circa 1995, but this might be an error card that's been hiding in plain sight all these years.

1998 Topps Tek Pattern 54 #34 Larry Walker

Here's another acetate card, and this one unambiguously shows Walker. Maybe it's just how the last photo was lit, but his goatee, which he usually wears, is pretty light-colored. 

Topps Tek was the acetate king of the late-'90s, and this is its inaugural 1998 set. Good old Pattern #54, for you Topps Tek experts. There are all sorts of rainbow reflective bits, applied quite inconsistently on the card front. Flip it over and you'll find the expected mirror image, along with a close-up and the card number telling collectors what this fractured set was up to.

Also on the back, we get a few of Walker's upcoming milestones. Topps projected the 1999 season would see him pass 200 stolen bases, and that the 2001 season would get him to 300 homers and 1,000 RBIs. Topps hit the home run and RBI milestones right on the money, but it took him a couple more years to cross 200 SBs, making 2001 a milestone-heavy season for the Hall-of-Fame lefty, a year that also marked his final All-Star appearance.

1996 Emotion-XL #175 Andres Galarraga

We've seen 1996 Emotion-XL (simply renamed to E-X in later years) twice on this blog, once with the Confident Jason Bates, and again with Mile High Ellis Burks. This time it's the Big Cat Andres Galarraga.

I was about to say that Big Cat is not an emotion, but did you see that profanity-laced video yesterday of the trail runner in Utah who spent six minutes backing away from a mountain lion? I was out for a hike myself yesterday and didn't see anything on the trail bigger than a squirrel. It would be an amazing photographic opportunity to run across something more, uh, predatory, but I'd prefer not to have an encounter like that four miles deep on a US Forest Service trail. It's a very real possibility, though.

I'll just let 1996 Emotion-XL take care of the Big Cat emotion.

1997 Score Reserve Collection #332 Bruce Ruffin

Back to the realm of the baseball diamond, we're going to shift away from the Blake Street Bombers and into some of the less-famous pitchers that spent some time in Denver. Bruce Ruffin goes all the way back to the inaugural 1993 season. The ex-Phillie began his time in Denver as a starter, but was later shifted to the bullpen and took over as closer. 1997 was his final season, but he never got a true sunset card in 1998. This is as close as he got.

Clearly, this is a parallel, as the original 1997 Score cards didn't contain this gold seal. Beckett calls it the Reserve Collection, but the seal itself has a monogram representing "Hobby Reserve by Score". Longtime readers might recall the Series 1 version of this parallel, known as Premium Stock. The Reserve Collection is just the Series 2 iteration, which has thinner card stock, a white border, and a different gold seal. It's reminiscent of what Donruss did with the 1991 base set: Series 1 borders were blue, while Series 2 was green.

And we all love 1991 Donruss, don't we?

1995 SP #15 Juan Acevedo (RC) FOIL

One would think that you're more likely to find a base card before a parallel enters your collection. But with '90s cards, or really ever since the '90s, any one of the many varieties might come your way before you find the most common variety. In this case, just the opposite happened, as I got the Silver parallel of this die-cut Juan Acevedo card from Big Shep before this base version arrived.

Last time, I mentioned that the card back contains a photo of Acevedo bunting. Unexpectedly, we didn't get to see any of that for real in 2020, so I'll flip this one over on the scanner for you.

1995 SP #15 Juan Acevedo (RC) FOIL (Reverse)

I'm pretty sure he's wearing the Big Cat's helmet in this photo, #14. This elicits a lot of Emotions, pardon the obvious pun.

2003 Topps Total Award Winners #AW13 Mike Hampton

We'll keep things shiny with 2003 Topps Total. That's not hard to do, really. But we'll have another pitcher hitting, which is pretty hard to do. It just so happens that Mike Hampton won a Silver Slugger in 2002, earning him this (slightly miscut) light green insert card. It's a good follow up to his 2002 Topps Total base card, which showed him bunting.

And before you shout "COORS!" at me, please flip this card over and know that Mike Hampton won the Silver Slugger award as a pitcher four years running, with three different teams. He'd follow that up with a fifth in 2003 as an Atlanta Brave, keeping that streak going for as long as the Dodgers had their Rookie of the Year streak in the mid-'90s.

No Rockie has ever won a Cy Young award, which is represented by the white outline at the top of the column of icons on the right, but the Silver Slugger award has been won by a Rockie three times. As you see here, it was won twice by Hampton, and once by Germán Márquez in 2018.

If and when the National League adopts the designated hitter, cards like this will likely be a thing of the past.

2001 Bowman's Best #79 Mike Hampton

I'm seeing a lot of Bowman's Best these days, but those have been from recent years. This is from 2001, much closer to the brand's inception. We're staying with Mike Hampton for one more card, this time showing him pitching. As good as he was at the plate, pitchers are at home on the mound. This textured card isn't quite as shiny as you'd think, given all that gold on the left. But it has the usual rainbow background you'd expect of a premium brand like this.

What makes Hampton worthy of inclusion in the Best set, according to the card back? Well, this was only a few years removed from the 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Thus far in his career, Hampton had held both those players to a combined 10-for-63 (.159), surrendering just one home run each to the famed sluggers. Topps also threw in the 0-for-14 Mickey Morandini, one of the random players that shows up here surprisingly often.

2003 Fleer Double Header #112 Jason Jennings

The last of today's pitching rotation is Jason Jennings. As long as we're talking about awards, he's the only Rockie to win Rookie of the Year. He also has the only mini of this post, coming in at 2 1/4" x 3" on 2003 Fleer Double Header. Unlike the short-printed Flip Cards, this is just a flat piece of cardboard with nothing to unfold.

Despite his 2002 accolade, either this set was developed before his Rookie of the Year award was announced, or Fleer just didn't think it was worth mentioning. The paragraph on the back goes as late as August 2002, mentioning his one-hit quality start on August 1st. I know Fleer knows about it, because they gave him a subset card in 2003 Fleer Tradition. At least both cards show the 10th Anniversary team patch.

This is a weird set. It's slightly smaller than a 1975 Topps Mini, and whatever they're doing to the background of the photo looks very artificial. No lens will blur the background like that. I do like the cute little team cap in the lower right, though. It was definitely inspired by the key design element in 1981 Topps.

2002 Absolute Memorabilia Team Tandems #TT-11 Todd Helton / Larry Walker

Let's return to the standard size, shall we? Here's a shiny two-player insert set featuring Todd Helton and Larry Walker, printed by what was then the Donruss-Playoff company. It's the real Larry Walker, for sure, the only star player to bridge the team from the Blake Street Bombers era well into the Helton years.

This design element with a baseball surrounded by three circles would really be perfect for that Team Nucleus card, but this time it's Team Tandems. The card number begins with "TT", not to be confused with Tools of the Trade, another 2002 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia insert set which used the same prefix. 

I wasn't really collecting at this time, so I missed the drama that led to Donruss being purchased by Pinnacle in 1996, followed shortly thereafter by Pinnacle's bankruptcy in 1998. After that, Donruss became affiliated with the Playoff brand, leading to sets like this with "Playoff Corporation" in the fine print. Later on that of course led to Panini.

I've always thought of Panini simply as a continuation of Donruss, so it's weird to see them release what I think of as Pinnacle brands too, like Score. They've just snapped it all up, other than Upper Deck which ended up with Fleer, who is still doing its thing with the NHL. It's not unlike what happens with the phone companies, which you can get a feel for when I write about Pac Bell Park / SBC Park / AT&T Park.

You'd think Topps would acquire some of these brands once in a while. I mean, that's what Bowman is. It just happened so much longer ago.

2002 Donruss Originals #202 Larry Walker 84

Larry Walker appeared in a nearly-identical pose on this 2002 Donruss Originals card. That's how the greats do it, consistency. Just watch that 60-second Mike Trout montage of his 300 home runs.

The fine print on this card has "Donruss Trading Card Co.", despite being from the same year as that Playoff set. Were Donruss and Playoff two separate but simultaneous brands for a while? Was it sort of a sub-brand like Fleer did with Skybox? I'm not sure, but after reading up on all this, suddenly it makes a lot more sense as to why there's no Donruss section in my 1999 or 2000 binders.

Can we really blame the 1990s for being such a crazy time to collect? The ownership of most of these companies was in total upheaval. Don't forget Pacific either.

Anyway, once Donruss was back on shelves, they released this Originals set. It's sort of an equivalent to Topps Archives, where they dipped into their past designs to use with then-current players. They used four designs for the only year of the Originals brand, 1982, 1984, 1986, and 1988. Clearly, what you see here is the 1984 design. At first, I thought there was a weird printing error underneath the Donruss logo, but after looking past the curves, I realized it was actually Walker's left foot, and those are the Adidas stripes.

2004 SkyBox LE #70 Larry Walker

It's been a lot of Larry Walker in this post (depending on who's really on that Team Nucleus card), but one more did catch my eye. It's another die-cut, and it's the first card from 2004 Skybox LE to enter my collection. LE, which clearly stands for Limited Edition, adds a few thin border lines, uses selective color to make the primary subject pop out of the background, and even gives us the player's uniform number on the left.

On the card back, which leaves a lot of empty space as Fleer did on many of their sets at the time, we're given a single line of statistics with Walker's career totals, and a short paragraph. In it, we're told that "Larry Walker is the name you'll see most often in the Rockies record book." Todd Helton has since taken over many of the offensive categories, especially the ones that are simply counting stats, but Walker is still in first place in quite a few average-based and Sabermetric categories like OPS+. He remains the career leader in batting average, hit by pitches, on-base percentage, and others. This card gives us his 2003 OBP of .422, which was actually a few points lower than the .426 he racked up during his entire Rockies career.

2005 Upper Deck ESPN Web Gems #WG-22 Todd Helton

Upper Deck joined forces with ESPN in 2005 to make a small 90-card set, complete with ESPN-themed insert sets. There was an ESPY insert set, a SportsCentury insert set (sort of a precursor to 30 for 30), this Web Gems insert set, and a few others. It's also brand-new to my collection.

I don't watch ESPN regularly enough to know whether they ever utter "Web Gems" on-air anymore, but it used to be their name for the segment showing each day's best defensive plays. Hunter Renfroe of the Rays would be on it at least twice tonight in ALCS Game 3. If they don't use it anymore, they should. In a game where the three true outcomes are becoming increasingly common, I'd watch a Web Gems video every day, especially since I know Nolan Arenado will be on it every day.

Everyone knows that Nolan Arenado is the best defender to ever play for the Rockies (he's already the career leader in defensive WAR), but Todd Helton was pretty good too. Helton had his share of Web Gems, and you don't win three Gold Gloves without plenty of them. He had a career .996 fielding percentage, good for eighth all-time among first basemen.

2002 Upper Deck Ovation #129 Jay Payton

If you thought that Bowman's Best card contained a lot of texture, just wait until you see 2002 Upper Deck Ovation. The entire team logo is raised, and it takes up about half the card. Of course, since this is Upper Deck, there's lots of copper foil. 

I haven't shown this set on the blog since the early days of Infield Fly Rule, and that was before I changed my scanner settings to make the images look a little more realistic. I think the copper comes across a little better this way.

That was so long ago, I wouldn't have thought anything of it if I saw Jay Payton wearing #27 back then. That's Trevor Story's number now, and one of the easy ones to get in the stadium trivia games.

2001 Topps Gold #266 Terry Shumpert /2001

Concluding Part 1 but still early in this journey through Jeremy's trade is Terry Shumpert, who spent five seasons as a Rockie. He began his career with five seasons as a Royal, and I still think of him that way because of how many Terry Shumpert Royals cards I saw in my early days of collecting. Look it up though. He played more career games with the Rockies.

This is a parallel from 2001 Topps, back when Topps Gold really meant it. Granted, the Topps logo, the nameplate, and a thin part of the border would have been gold anyway, but making the whole border gold really adds a lot. Of course, it doesn't scan that well. On the back, the serial number is giant and gold, #1553 out of 2001. I've long lamented that Topps changed the Topps Gold serial numbers to black many years ago, and you'll see some examples of that in Part 2.

2001 Topps Gold #266 Terry Shumpert /2001 (Reverse)

That's how a serial number should look on a Topps Gold card.

The end.

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

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

1997 Ultra #189 Kevin Ritz

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

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

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

2001 Ultra Tomorrow's Legends #4 Todd Helton

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

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

1993 Ultra Performers #7 David Nied

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

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

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

2001 Fleer Premium #172 Jeff Cirillo

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

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

2001 Fleer Game Time #88 Magglio Ordóñez

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

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

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

2002 E-X #50 Todd Helton

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

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

1997 Fleer Rookie Sensations #17 Neifi Pérez

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

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

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

2003 Fleer Tradition #421 Jason Jennings AW

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

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

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

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

The Trading Post #124: Blog Reader Chris

Not everyone who reads this blog has a blog of their own. Some are just avid readers, and presumably have stuck around even though it's taken close to a year for me to write a proper post about cards they've sent me. This marks the second occasion that reader Chris has sent cards, and he definitely has some great Rockies cards at his disposal.

2005 Ultra Gold Medallion #186 Preston Wilson

Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion parallels remind me how much I miss this set. Other than Topps, Fleer was my preferred brand when I first discovered collecting. These parallels always had a nice differentiation over the years, in this case an aesthetically-pleasing die cut, with a simple curve in the upper right that neatly complements Wilson's photo on the card back.

My only criticism of this card is that the fonts are a little strange. The name lettering on the bottom looks roughly like what a team logo would look like if Preston Wilson were his own team. On the back, the "5"s look a little too much like "S"s, and the card number itself doesn't really stand out despite how large it is. But those are minor gripes, and the card industry could really use a brand like this again.

Maybe Stadium Club will look like this in a few years.

2007 Upper Deck Elements #15 Todd Helton

A trade package of this size is a lot like a tiny dime box. A few parallels, some commons which were already in my collection, and lots of shiny Todd Helton cards. This Upper Deck Elements card is from that magical year of 2007, and it points out that Helton had a stellar batting average, which ended up at .316 for his career.

It isn't just shiny; it also has a refractor finish, and lots of gold and silver arcs surrounding his photo. It might even be a night card, or at least early evening, since there are some stadium lights reflecting off of Helton's batting helmet. I'm surprised I haven't shown this set on the blog yet. I have quite a few cards from it in my collection, over two full pages. Surprisingly for a set like this, there are no parallels other than printing plates.

2008 Upper Deck Spectrum #33 Todd Helton

A similar set from a year later is UD Spectrum. Elements only lasted a year; Spectrum made it until 2009. This set you have seen before, in both base and relic fashion. That attractive turquoise color, which would be well-suited to a Marlins card, is used across all teams, at least all the teams I've seen. We also get an excellent example of a first baseman's mitt.

Helton apparently grew his goatee between these two sets, and remained the face of the Rockies throughout. He led, and continues to lead, a plethora of Rockies categories, records he will certainly hold for many years to come, depending on how Nolan Arenado's free agency goes.

2006 Ultra Diamond Producers #DP11 Todd Helton

Helton could, and did, hit for average, but he also had great power. Fleer Ultra's Diamond Producers insert set, which missed an opportunity to put some shiny jewels at the corners of the diamond, tells us that his .337 average at the time led all active players, and that his eight straight seasons above .315 was only the third time a first baseman had done that. No idea who the other two are, but that's an impressive stat. I hope his Hall of Fame voting numbers reflect that. Stats-wise, he's on par with Stan Musial.

His average trailed off in later years, that .316 number tying him precisely with Bichette and Galarraga on the team leaderboard.

2008 Upper Deck StarQuest Rare #7 Matt Holliday

Unlike UD Elements which only had one flavor, the Starquest insert set had quite a few colored varieties. The green variety from Upper Deck First Edition arrived early in the life of Infield Fly Rule (it's five years old today!), but this pale blue version is classified as "Rare", with two more versions beyond that, "Super Rare" and "Ultra Rare".

2005 Topps Opening Day #136 Matt Holliday

Matt Holliday made a high-profile but relatively low-impact return to his first team late in 2018. He hit two home runs in 25 regular-season games, and got another taste of Postseason baseball in October. He scored a run in the Wild Card game, which took place right here in Wrigley Field, as pictured on this 2005 Opening Day card. Perhaps one of my friendly Cubs fan buddies can help identify the infielder who's applying a late tag to Holliday.

The card back mentions Jeromy Burnitz, who was then a teammate of Holliday, and who was coached by Matt's father at Oklahoma State. Burnitz even spent a season with the Cubbies in 2005. The card also tells us about the Rockies' win on May 18, 2004, a game in which Burnitz and Holliday hit back-to-back home runs, twice. It happened in the second inning and again in the seventh.

And before you shout "Coors!", that was a road game in Cincinnati.

2007 SP Rookie Edition #102 Jeff Baker (RC)

Just in case it's not already hard enough to read gold lettering on gold foil, Upper Deck decided to put a whole row of backslashes behind Jeff Baker's name and position. It might be a record-setter of illegibility. It is plenty shiny, though, and is reminiscent of 1994 Upper Deck with the smaller photo area off to the side.

This photo was taken in Hi Corbett Field in Tucson, Arizona. I've been there; trust me. But it was definitely warmer than 44 degrees Fahrenheit then. This shot for Baker's rookie card must have been taken quite early in the morning at the very start of Spring Training. 44 degrees in southern Arizona is chilly.

2002 Leaf Certified #36 Jason Jennings

The base card of Jason Jennings from 2002 Leaf Certified is new to my collection, but I did already have the relic version, complete with purple fabric. That card congratulated me on my good fortune of owning a relic of the 2002 NL Rookie of the Year, the only Rockie to win the award. The base card gave us a more traditional card back, with the requisite paragraph of Jennings' accomplishments, such as seven straight wins in early 2002.

Those little pine trees behind the center field wall were just babies back then. It's grown enough that it's possible for a TV spot shot there to look like it's really in the woods.

2008 Finest Refractors #13 Troy Tulowitzki

Troy Tulowitzki spent lots of time at Coors Field, but he'll finally be realizing a lifelong dream of playing for the New York Yankees. He'll have to give up his uniform number 2 to play there, but he'll be covering the same ground that his idol Derek Jeter did not long ago. He'll also be joined by DJ LeMahieu, who just signed a two-year, $24 million contract in the Bronx.

Needless to say, I'll be following the Yankees this year. I wouldn't even be surprised if they're punting on the Machado / Harper frenzy this year to try to land Arenado next offseason.

Topps was quick to honor the young star in its 2008 Finest set. Tulo had a heck of a year in 2007, just barely missing the Rookie of the Year award, finishing second to Ryan Braun. He also made it to the World Series, of course. And this refractor's key stat is about Tulo turning the 13th unassisted triple play in MLB history. The card tells us it was only the 12th in the regular season; that's because one of them took place during the 1920 World Series.

Those are a pair of fun facts about the World Series. The only triple play was also unassisted, and the only no-hitter was also a perfect game.

1994 Pinnacle #446 Andres Galarraga

1994 Pinnacle took it much easier on the gold foil than 2007 SP Rookie Edition. Everything is readable, and Pinnacle selected a great action shot for their first full bleed design. Andres Galarraga is feeding one his pitcher as second baseman Roberto Mejia covers in the background. The orange outline on the outfield wall places this in Candlestick Park, and I particularly like how the shadow of Galarraga's mitt projects on his leg.

This card doesn't have a paragraph on the back, although it does highlight his .422 batting average with Runners in Scoring Position. That's clutch, and even better than his .370 overall average, which won the NL batting title in 1993. Pinnacle gives us just a little extra gold foil on the front of the card for this award winner, something Topps used to do rather than create a whole bunch of extra league leader cards.

1996 Pacific Estrellas Latinas #EL-8 Vinny Castilla

Pacific, on the other hand, did whatever it could get away with. Behind Vinny Castilla is a chaotic maze of gold foil, almost like it was etched by a slime mold or something, There are a few five-pointed stars in there for good measure. It's part of a 36-card insert set called Estrellas Latinas, or Latin Stars. I don't know Spanish that well, but I wonder if it shouldn't have instead been Estrellas Latinos. The primary paragraph on the back is in Spanish, translated beneath that in English, and it tells us that the 1995 Rockies had four hitters with 30 homers or more. He was in the same club with fellow Blake Street Bombers Larry Walker, Dante Bichette, and Andres Galarraga. And that was in a strike-shortened year.

The black background makes this a great-looking card. I particularly like the Rockies logo with the black backdrop in the lower right.

1998 Fleer Tradition #599 Larry Walker UM

Hall of Fame candidate Larry Walker got a card in this 1998 Fleer insert set, which looks like it has a little 1995 Fleer DNA. That's a watch movement in the background, sprinkled with a few "1998" numerals. The unforgettable moment in question, if we flip to the back where Walker has magically grown a goatee, was his game on May 21st, 1996. He had 13 total bases that night against the Pirates, which was two home runs, a double, and a triple. Even better than the cycle. The next day, Fleer tells us, he had two more triples and a double, setting an NL record for consecutive extra-base hits.

I don't have specific memories of any of that, but I do remember the night before. I was at the game on May 20th, 1996, another win over the Pirates. I remember that ex-Rockie Charlie Hayes hit a home run, and got a friendly standing ovation. My seat happened to be next to an older fan named Neil, and I came pretty close to catching a ball in batting practice near the right field foul pole.

Yeah, my memory from that age is pretty sharp. It was my second-ever trip to Coors Field. Mr. Walker even had a hit and two RBIs.

2000 Vanguard #64 Ben Petrick

Just like in my last post, there was a card of Ben Petrick in here. The card describes him as "Colorado's backstop of the future." Sadly, that was not to be the case.

This thick card is from a set of just 100 cards, and the base set is new to my collection. Apparently, I already have a Barry Bonds card from the High Voltage insert set. Vanguard only lasted for a single year, but it could have been a premium fixture in Pacific's lineup. It might even be acetate-on-cardboard. The blue star in the set logo gives it the look of a minor-league set, and the Rookie logo in the lower left is a design unique to Pacific.

2007 Bowman Heritage Rainbow Foil #128 Willy Taveras

Our final selection from this stack is a shiny Bowman Heritage card of Willy Taveras. It's even thicker than Petrick's Pacific card, and has that slightly unusual look of shiny foil on old-fashioned cardboard.

Willy Taveras doesn't show up around here very often, but he was the regular center fielder in the pennant year of 2007. The speedster also led the majors in stolen bases the following year, with 68. He was bit invisible among the major stars of Helton, Holliday, and Tulowitzki, but he patrolled the cavernous center field at Coors, which is one of the more difficult jobs out there. He appeared in two World Series during his seven-year career, but lost them both, one with the Astros in 2005, then with the Rockies in 2007.

This was a great selection of cards from the earlier days of the Rockies' history, and even a few sets I had never seen before. Chris, if you're still following me, thank you very much!