The Trading Post #84: Jaybarkerfan's Junk

Anytime you see a package on its way to you from Hazel Green, Ala., you know that some goodies are on their way from Jaybarkerfan's Junk. The creator of the #Supertraders group made sure that all his readers were able to get in on some holiday trading action. He ran what he called a Trade-a-Thon in November, offering each reader the chance to claim up to five cards throughout the two-week process. I claimed four, and even with the bonus pack he threw in, this will be a rare post without any Rockies.

2008 UD Masterpieces #5 Max Scherzer (RC)

Upper Deck Masterpieces is an absolutely beautiful set. 2008 was the second of only two years that UD printed this product. Even with short prints, it's only a 120-card checklist, but they did an absolutely terrific job selecting players for the set. Max Scherzer, who had no Major League experience when this card was printed, has gone on to win two Cy Young Awards, and he threw two no-hitters in 2015. The first of those was only a pitch away from being a perfect game, but one pitch got a little bit away from him, Jose Tabata leaned into it, and Scherzer had to settle for a no-hitter.

It's a heck of a card to get your Rookie Card logo on. Upper Deck couldn't know how dominant he would become, and we've all seen our share of busted prospects, but things worked out really well for this card, and more importantly, for Max Scherzer.

2010 Bowman Prospects Black #BP1 Stephen Strasburg

Scherzer spent the majority of his career so far in Detroit, but now shares the rotation with Stephen Strasburg on the Washington Nationals. Strasburg was the most hyped pitching prospect in recent memory, drawing comparisons to Mark Fidrych. Watching his debut back in 2010 was quite impressive, as he struck out fourteen Pirates in his first-ever start. Unfortunately, he needed Tommy John surgery shortly after that, but he's settled into a groove in the Nats' pitching staff. The Nationals have had a pretty terrifying rotation ever since his debut, fielding guys like Gio Gonzalez, Doug Fister, Jordan Zimmerman, etc....

Of course, this card itself has quite the story behind it. Strasburg mania was in full force in late spring 2010, and there was finally a Bowman gold mine out there. They print cards of virtually every young prospect out there, many of whom never make it to the Majors. But Strasburg's First Bowman Card was the rare item that briefly brought baseball cards back into the national spotlight. His /1 Superfractor parallel of this Bowman card was found in 2010, and promptly spiraled to a five-figure sale price on eBay. Just months later, it changed hands again for $25k. The national media didn't miss that story, and I'm sure that millions of Americans that hadn't paid attention to the hobby for years or even decades got a crash course in the existence of parallels, printing plates, and /1 products.

The above is a parallel itself, the black-bordered variety. Bowman's base Prospect set that year actually used a white border, saving the black borders for a parallel set.

So while I don't have the Superfractor that's worth as much as a new car, I am able to add a parallel to my collection that reminds me of the Strasburg Fever that gripped the nation in 2010.

2004 Fleer InScribed #80 Tom Seaver RET /1000

Fleer made a lot of sets in their final few years of existence. I thought I had seen most of them, but this Inscribed set is new to my eyes. 2004 was the only year of this set, but it's pretty striking. The thick black border has a matte finish with some silver foil (including that serial number). The background of the photo is also matte, but the player's image itself is glossy. It's a minimalist design, and all the right elements catch the light, while others fade into the background. The "Inscribed" logo at the top isn't my favorite, but I'd be interested in finding more of these.

Only the ten retired players in this set got the /1000 serial number, and all ten of those are Hall of Famers. There were also fifteen rookies rounding out the main set at a print run of /750, containing a few recognizable names like Matt Holliday, Yadier Molina, and Kevin Youkilis.

Seaver had a long, Hall-of-Fame worthy career, but this card only had room for five seasons. Fleer featured his early time on the Mets for this card, giving us stats from 1969 through 1973. During that time, he led the league in strikeouts and ERA three times, somehow managing to miss out on the Cy Young Award for two of those seasons. During that same span, he appeared in two World Series, winning one, was an All-Star in each of those five seasons, and might have gotten into the Hall on those five seasons alone, not even counting the other fifteen seasons he pitched.

Not sure if Strasburg will join Seaver in the Hall of Fame, but I like Scherzer's chances.

1992 Triple Play Gallery #GS-11 Cal Ripken, Jr.

It wasn't all pitchers in this package. I have a soft spot for these early-1990s Donruss insert cards after they finally decided to evolve their design a bit. Cal Ripken, Jr. was definitely one of my favorite players when he was still active. I didn't get to see much of him at all, since it was pretty tough to see American League games back then, especially before Interleague Play. The All Star Game was usually the only time he'd make a TV appearance in my household. Cable, not to mention MLB.TV, has really changed things.

Of course, this card mentions his streak of consecutive games played, a record he'd break about three seasons later, toward the end of 1995. I remember being in sixth grade when that happened, and that many of my classmates chose the occasion to feature in their "Current Events" presentations to the class.

Ripken wasn't just known for his longevity, like Omar Vizquel or Jamie Moyer. He was darn talented out there, winning two MVP awards in his career, and making the All-Star team every year from 1983 until his retirement in 2001. He even hit a first-pitch homer in that 2001 All-Star Game in Seattle.

Not a bad way for one of my favorite all-time players to wrap up a legendary career.

1986 Sportflics #8 Cal Ripken, Jr.

My fellow Supertrader didn't stop there though. He even threw in an unopened pack of cards for his Trade-a-Thon participants, and I ended up with a pack of 1986 Sportflics. I bought some of the 1994 product, but I didn't really know this brand went back further than that. I might have a card or two from the 1990 set, but definitely none this old.

Of course, these never scan well, but the lenticular printing process on this card allows for one of three images to be visible, depending on how the card is tilted. A much younger Ripken, only several hundred games into his streak, gets one headshot and two action shots at the plate. I'm sure he sat a few late innings later in the streak, but at the time of printing, he hadn't sat a single inning in 603 games. That's nearly 5,500 straight innings!

There were a couple of miniature trivia cards in here, a little smaller than those World Series History lenticular insert cards from 1991 Score. On these, we learn that Ernie Banks holds the NL Record for most Grand Slams in a single season, with 5. Albert Pujols has since tied that NL mark, and a couple AL'ers even surpassed it with 6. Travis Hafner did it about a decade ago, as did Don Mattingly just a year after this was printed. The other Trivia card is about Mike Schmidt, then the active player with the most Gold Glove awards.

1986 Sportflics #179 1985 Gold Glove

I found this final card to be quite interesting, and I assumed that these Sportflics cards just displayed two images like they did in 1994, until I looked more closely. This is something like a League Leader card, but riffing off of the second trivia card, they picked six 1985 Gold Glovers to feature. The three photos on the top (Don Mattingly, George Brett, and Keith Hernandez) are posed shots, while the three on the bottom (Willie McGee, Ron Guidry, and Dale Murphy) are action photos. My scanner preferred to show Brett and Guidry, plus a ghostly inclusion of McGee's bat.

By the way, the presence of Dale Murphy makes this ever-so-slightly a Rockies post, as the two-time MVP signed as a free agent with the Rockies in 1993 and played 26 games for them before retiring.

Anyway, these six players all led a statistic in 1985, as well as an award for defensive excellence. Every position has a Gold Glove winner (sometimes co-winners), so there's no mention of thirteen other players, unlike what we might see on a more traditional League Leaders card.

Keith Hernandez led the NL in Game-Winning RBIs in 1985, a statistic that isn't tracked anymore. There was quite a bit of debate about whom to actually credit with a GW-RBI (the back of 1987 Topps went wild over this stat). A walkoff hit is easy enough to figure out, but when your team takes the lead by three in the 7th, for example, but ends up only winning by one, the GW-RBI went to the player that took the lead, not the player that padded the cushion enough.

To my mind, that sounds pretty much the same as how a winning pitcher is determined. All a team has to do is keep a lead to ensure a pitcher gets the win. It can be a cat-and-mouse game all night, but as long as the lower-scoring team doesn't at least tie it, the pitcher of record remains the same. I'm sure better statisticians than I can explain the nuances of why tracking Wins that way is fine, but GW-RBIs isn't. But I digress.

When the statistic existed, no one had more than Keith Hernandez, thanks in large part to his 1985 performance. And we definitely just went down a statistical rabbit hole there, but they're an integral part of baseball, now more than ever.

Just like trading is an integral part of card collecting.

The Trading Post #66: Jaybarkerfan's Junk

The first time I attended a card show after my exit from the hobby in about 1996 came when I was in college. It was probably 2003 or 2004, at the now defunct Westminster Mall north of Denver. Alfonso Soriano was one of the hot tickets back then, and Todd Helton was solidly cemented as the Rockies' franchise player.

I learned a lot that day; that card prices had fallen quite a bit, overproduction cards were available for next to nothing, there were neat little relics of uniforms and bats, there wasn't much left in the way of Score or Donruss, and cards had gotten pretty shiny.

But the thing that stood out the most were serial numbers. Right there on the card was very official-looking proof of a card's scarcity. I came away with a nice stack of numbered refractors from 2003 Topps Chrome, just amazed that I had one of only 199 copies of each of the Black Refractors I purchased, like the below.

2003 Topps Chrome Black Refractors #327 Jose Hernandez /199

I found a few other numbered refractors of the slightly more common colors, like the /449 Golds and /699 Blues. I even snagged a few XFractor box toppers numbered to a mere 57, complete with the Topps Uncirculated slab. I was hooked, and they remain one of my favorite types of cards. This is partially why I was a bit annoyed that Topps removed the serial numbers from Opening Day blue parallels the past couple years.

But that affinity for documented scarcity made a particular trade package from #Supertrader head honcho Jaybarkerfan's Junk pretty amazing. I had a really hard time narrowing down cards to scan for this post, because pretty much all of them had this:

2002 Upper Deck Ballpark Idols #239 Rene Reyes /1750 (RC)

Yup, serial numbers. I don't recall much about Rene Reyes, but I vaguely remember him as a utility guy in the early 2000s. There was a lot in this package I'd never seen before, primarily because these types of cards (and this era) don't often show up in discount boxes. Plus the number of sets being printed up in the late 1990s and early 2000s was absolutely staggering.

It has all the correct dimensions of a standard card, but only has borders on three sides. The actual photo and the top banner continue right up to the edge, sort of like the Tibetan Flag. UD also uses one of their favorite devices to create a virtual 3D appearance, letting the photo overlap the other boxes, which makes the player appear to pop out of the card.

2002 Diamond Kings #160 Aaron Cook (RC)

Though they only had a few years left, Donruss was still printing in 2002, including their long-running Diamond King set. I wrote a bit about painted cards in my previous post, and Diamond Kings are perhaps the most well-known example of them. Anyone who collected at the height of the industry probably remembers them, though they aren't likely to know Panini still uses the brand today, nor that Topps has a product called Gypsy Queen with a similar look.

Cook's red beard is painted the correct color, but his hair isn't. He has red hair too, but the artist chose to go with a reddish-brown for the canvas background, rather than Cook's hair, which would have been correct. What I do like about these cards is that they have a rather unique surface, a lot like a playing card.

1993 Armando Reynoso The Queen of Spades

In fact, there were a couple of actual playing cards in here. This isn't from a set that Beckett recognizes, and there's no card number other than the Queen of Spades. I'm unsure about the provenance of this one, but I've played enough hearts to know that you don't want the 13 points this card represents (unless you shoot the moon, of course).

1997 Topps Chrome #26 Eric Young

Multiple exposures were quite the trend in the mid-1990s, and they do help create the illusion of action. The dirt spray helps too. I'd love to see a card or two like this in a modern set. Gold foil and glossy coatings were some of the pioneering innovations in the 1990s that stuck around, but multiple exposures and photos on the back are quite rare these days. I wouldn't mind seeing those make a resurgence.

Topps Chrome was only around for two years when this was printed, and already the dreaded curl was starting to show up. This isn't too bad, nothing like some of the 2010s I saw. And they used a mirror finish, rather than the odd dot pattern found in the inaugural 1996 set.

1996 Topps Chrome #122 Craig Biggio

I guess they are actually little diamonds, now that I look more closely. But there are dots around the border. I'm glad they got away from this type of pattern, otherwise I don't see myself liking Topps Chrome as much throughout the years. And I'm even more glad they use colored borders to differentiate parallels, rather than different dot patterns (though I suppose Topps Tek went down that road a bit).

2008 Finest Refractors Black #139 Seth Smith /99 (RC)

You might be a bit curious after those first few paragraphs where I went on and on about serial numbers, as few of the cards so far have them. Don't worry, they're coming. When it rains, it pours. To tide you over, this Finest card of Seth Smith is the rarest in the whole bunch, numbered to just 99 copies. As far as '08 Finest goes, that's middle-of-the-pack in terms of scarcity. And the black border works really well with the Rockies' pinstriped home uniforms. The Rookie Card logo is quite large, but doesn't obstruct anything and fits into this bold design quite well.

2013 Bowman Chrome Mini #137 Corey Dickerson

There was a nice little stack of these Bowman Chrome minis, including this one of Corey Dickerson, a rare look at a consistent major leaguer on a Bowman card. Usually the noise of the prospects drowns out the batch of established players, but they're in there. I guess collectors generally hold on to those types of cards, ditching the prospect cards of players who didn't pan out after a few years.

A couple of top prospects like Jon Gray and Tom Murphy were also included, but Dickerson is the only one to have made a name for himself in the Majors. He's not even on the Rockies anymore; instead he's having a decent season so far down in Tampa Bay.

2016 Topps Heritage #311 Jason Motte

Jason Motte, a reliever who has done quite well for the Cardinals (and a year as a Cub), was picked up by the Rockies in the offseason to add some much-needed depth to their bullpen. Trouble is, he's working through shoulder problems and has yet to throw a pitch in the Majors this season. Hopefully he'll be back by the time the Rockies start slipping down the standings, as is expected once the summer months roll around.

Also, that's my first look at 2016 Topps Heritage. 1967 isn't my favorite vintage set, but I do like the pale green of the card backs.

But Adam, where are all the serial numbers you promised? You've only done three so far, and one of those you already owned!

Fine. Brace yourselves.

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

I've seen more than a few Topps Co-Signers base cards over the years, but this is one of only a few that have a pair of facsimile signatures. This product only lasted three years, and while it's an interesting concept, the execution fell pretty flat. There are way more colored parallels than I care to count, but its easily in the double digits. Double that number again when you learn that there's an "A" and "B" variety of these parallels, both with a different ghostly teammate in the background. Though Jeff Francis literally gets top billing, this is considered a Garrett Atkins card, as he has the back entirely to himself, along with #022 of 175.

2008 Topps Co-Signers Silver Red #42a Todd Helton /400

Not much changed in 2008 Co-Signers, except the player is his own ghost on the "A" variety, only getting a teammate on the "B" variety. Both edges are a little beat up, but I've asked for red foil before, and there's a nice amount of it here. I assume that the "Silver" part refers to the background color, and the "Red" part to the foil and banners. It's just an odd thing to say, "Silver Red". I've never seen one, but there's also a "Hyper Plaid" foil color, itself with the same six banner colors available on Silver cards.

At least it's not a fractured set. But I can see why it flopped.

2012 Bowman Prospects Blue #BP12 Rafael Ortega /500

Rafael Ortega played two games for the Rockies in 2012, and apparently he's on the 40-man roster for the Angels right now, having appeared in a handful of games for them this year. I can't recall ever hearing of him, but Bowman Blue parallels often (always?) have serial numbers, and this one does. This one in particular is notable, as it's the final one in the print run, 500/500. I don't recall for certain, but I believe this is the only one in my collection like that. It's not any rarer than any of the other 499 copies, but there's something about that final one that is immensely satisfying.

2011 Topps Lineage Diamond Anniversary Platinum Refractors #118 Todd Helton

We'll take a quick breather here for a hyper sparkle Topps Lineage parallel. I am about a dozen cards from completing the base set, but I have a few of these parallels too. It's the same sparkle pattern found on 2011 Topps base cards, and there's a distorted glimpse of the Padres dugout in the background. Condition-wise, it's a bit off-centered, but I can't stop tilting this card under a bright light source to see the light bounce off all those facets.

2002 Donruss Production Line #PL-25 Larry Walker SLG /662

Back to our regularly scheduled serial-numbered programming, here's the inspiration for those Stat Line parallels found on current Donruss cards, where a player's statistics determine the print run. Natually, the better players will have more cards, because if they were to do one based off of Bartolo Colon's career HR count, it would be a 1/1. Interestingly, if they based it off his walks, it wouldn't exist yet. He's coming up on the all-time record for most plate appearances without a walk, and this weekend he became the oldest player to hit his first home run. As Night Owl says, that is reason enough to keep the DH out of the National League (or scrapping it entirely).

Incidentally, Night Owl received a pretty similar package, filled to the brim with scarce cards like this. Of course, his were Dodgers, but like that Orlando Hudson card from Colbey, another rogue NL Wester snuck into mine.

2003 Upper Deck Classic Portraits #152 Chris Capuano MP /2003 (RC)

I remember Capuano as a Brewer (in fact that's where he's pitching now, after bouncing around the league since 2011), but he got his start with the Diamondbacks. Though the sentence on the back documents his first MLB win on July 9th, 2003, the stat line claims he has "No MLB Experience". Perhaps that gives us an indication of just how much UD was rushing all these sets to market. The black marble background reminds me of one of the Bowman sets (1999?).

2004 Studio Rally Caps #RC-18 Joe Kennedy /999

Donruss went a little wacky with this insert set, having pitcher Joe Kennedy balance a baseball on the bill of his cap (or at least photoshopped one in). To me, it just looks like he flipped his bill up, rather than a true rally cap where you turn your hat inside out. If I were Joe Kennedy, I'd be happy that there are only 999 copies of this out there.

I remember David Freese's Rally Squirrel card, but I don't know if the Angels' Rally Monkey ever made it onto a card.

Superstitious lot, us baseball fans. I've sported a rally cap at Coors Field more than once.

1996 Donruss Elite #71 Dante Bichette /10,000

Players from the Blake Street Bombers era are a rarity on this type of card, since it was just beginning to be introduced in the early days of Coors Field. This one of Bichette, which reminds me a lot of 1994 Leaf Limited, is numbered to a staggering 10,000 copies. Makes you wonder how many cards were printed in a regular base set, if this special one has ten thousand examples. I spelled that out to match the card number, Seventy-One. Such was the gravitas of a serial-numbered card in 1995.

2013 Bowman Chrome Purple Refractors #36 Troy Tulowitzki /199

We haven't seen Tulowitzki yet, and this purple beauty from 2013 (I got the year right without looking it up!) is #42 of 199. Maybe you could start a Jackie Robinson themed serial-numbered card collection with just #42s. It would be a daunting challenge.

The paragraphs on the card backs of a prospect-heavy set like Bowman can usually be considered a scouting report, but with an established star like Tulo, his talents are well-known, like his "outstanding plate discipline" and that he's a "smooth defender with [a] rifle arm".

2012 Topps Tier One Relics #TSR-TT Troy Tulowitzki /399 (MEM)

The Serial Number parade rolls on (where does he find all these?), and we get a relic, to boot. Tier One is another of Topps' ultra-premium (and ultra-expensive) brands, one I rarely see in discount boxes. Even Triple Threads and Museum Collection end up in there sometimes. As this /399 relic is the least scarce card in 2012 Tier One, it's the closest thing to a base card that exists in that set.

It's hard to tell, but this doesn't look like silver foil to me. Rather, it looks more like a white gold. The color-coding is excellent, and the photograph is crystal clear. They chose an interesting stat for the back, writing about his career .389 average with the bases loaded. I imagine that's dropped a bit since then, but this is an absolutely gorgeous card. I wonder if this particular bat was used on any of those plate appearances.

2015 Bowman's Best Best of '15 Autographs #B15-BR Brendan Rodgers

The final card in this marathon post (you try narrowing this down!) is an on-card autograph of Brendan Rodgers. With Trevor Story making quite a name for himself already, this recently-drafted shortstop might have a tough time breaking into the big leagues, but if he does, and if he turns in a performance anything like Story has so far, this card will surely be a hot item in the Denver area.

Though it doesn't have a serial number like most cards in this post, it's a bold yet simple design, and is evidence of a Rockies farm system that is stronger than I can ever remember it being. Rodgers has lots of promise, Story is absolutely on fire, David Dahl is still coming along, and there are a slew of top pitching prospects to show for the Tulowitzki trade.

This was an amazingly generous trade package, and trust me when I say that the life of a #Supertrader is a good one. We still have openings for the Royals, Marlins, and Indians if you want in on some of this magic!

The Trading Post #54: Jaybarkerfan's Junk

As you may be aware, I am the Rockies representative in the #SuperTraders group spearheaded by Wes of Jaybarkerfan's Junk. He might be the most prolific trader in our whole community, as many bloggers quake in their boots at the prospect of a "bombing", a personalized trade package that really can't be matched, hard though you might try.

As a Rockies collector, there are relatively few overproduction cards of my team out there, other than 1993 and 1994. While I'm still buried up to my neck in cards from that era, like we all are, few of them come via trade packages. A coworker dropped a stack of at least 200 cards from 1991 and 1992 Topps on my desk at work today, and while many of the things he found when cleaning out his garage this weekend ended up in the trash, he knew he had a buddy that would be happy to thumb through some old Topps cards.

My inaugural #SuperTraders trade package, of course from Wes, had a few from 1993, but a surprisingly large portion of this shipment contained cards and sets I had never seen before.

2014 Bowman Sterling Prospects #BSP-9 Jon Gray

Cards like Bowman Sterling, a very shiny card with a basic silver background. It has sort of a cloudy appearance near the corners (much like 2016 Topps Base), and not quite the same mirror finish as Pinnacle Certified, but you could probably use this thing to tie a tie in case of emergency. It has some of Possible Future Rockies Ace Jon Gray's vital stats spelled out on the front, sort of a combination of Allen & Ginter and 1995 Fleer.

So there you go. Put 1995 Fleer, any A&G card, 2016 Topps, and 1997 Pinnacle Certified in a gene splicer, and you'll get 2014 Bowman Sterling, a new set in my collection.

2005 Artifacts Rainbow Blue #93 Todd Helton /100

Upper Deck made a ton of sets in the mid-2000s. MLB Artifacts definitely sounded familiar, and I did manage to find a lone card from 2005's release already in my collection. This Todd Helton card is the Rainbow Blue variety, with Todd Helton's initials in the background having the appearance of being carved in marble. The dark blue foil is a little hard to read, but you pretty much have to do something with the color to make a parallel, and with no border, foil it is.

2009 Bowman Chrome Blue Refractors #93 Brad Hawpe /150

A Bowman card of Brad Hawpe also gets the blue parallel treatment, though with a slightly more plentiful print run of 150. This is from the 2009 set (yes, I had to look it up), but I do give this card an extra nod for including the player's uniform number in the lower left. Few card brands do that, but it's a nice addition when not accompanied by a zillion other things. I'm looking at you, 1996 Donruss!

2010 Topps Copper #429 Seth Smith /399

The serial numbered goodness continues with this 2010 card, from Topps' 59th year of production. The left-hand curve makes this a distinctive set, as does the gigantic team logo in the lower left, something Upper Deck was not permitted to do that year. I don't remember what we agreed this set should be called (the curve set?), but to me, it's the "Lording It Over Upper Deck" set.

At first glance, you might think this is one of the gold parallels, but the border color is actually copper, an entirely different parallel set, with about one-fifth the print run. Or five times scarcer, if you prefer your math that way. I really dislike saying there is "more less" of something, which is what you're basically doing when you use a multiple with a word indicating less. No one says "My wallet has five times less money in it than it did before I did a beer and snack run at the ballpark."

Just a style preference. But anyway, /399. And it's my first 2010 copper parallel.

1995 Stadium Club #499 Andres Galarraga EC

Most of what I've shown you so far is pretty unfamiliar to me. I recognize a couple of the base designs, but there are definitely no duplicates so far. Same goes for this Galarraga card. I recognize the 1995-1996 Stadium Club logo, but never ran across an "Extreme Corps" card before. That's surprising, since I actually opened packs of this set in my first round of collecting. 1996 Stadium Club was one of the last sets I bought before I lost interest for several years.

Even more surprising is that this isn't even an insert. It's a subset. It's just a base card from 1995 Stadium Club, and I'm baffled that I never knew it existed.

So this is what a JBF bombing looks like, eh? I think I like this Super Trader thing.

1995 Finest #68 Dante Bichette

Finally, something I recognize! All those new cards were blowing my mind a little bit, so it's nice to return to normalcy for a few paragraphs.

Topps Finest was three years old by this time, and though it doesn't have the gorgeous green shade of 1994, I was still pretty blown away that a baseball card could look so much like a jewel. Then Topps turned it into one of those atrocious fractured sets, and it took a while before I started liking it again.

If there's one thing I could banish from the history of baseball cards, it would be fractured sets. Manufactured relics, sticker autographs, dozens of colored parallels, junk wax, reprints of five-year-old cards, the mind-numbing sameness of Bowman, <insert your most hated year> Donruss, and all the other things we card bloggers like to nitpick could all stay. Even short prints. Fractured sets are the devil.

2005 Upper Deck Marquee Attractions Jersey #MA-TH Todd Helton (MEM)

And now we're right back to cards I've never seen before. This one happens to have the playfully coincidental card number of "MA-TH", but there's also a pinstriped swatch relic in there! The design of this UD card hides the presence of the relic like no set I've ever seen before. It took a few trips through the stack before I even realized there was one. I like it, though! It has sort of an art deco look, perhaps what a relic card would look like if they existed in the mid-20th century. And like all UD cards, it contains that reassuring hologram on the back.

2000 Upper Deck Hitter's Club #84 Ben Petrick HS

If not for a very recent Mystery Pack, this Hitter's Club card would have been another novel set to me. It has the same mint green foil as that Marlins card, but this time with a Coors Field shot in the background!

There are a few bloggers out there with Ben Petrick player collections. I don't remember much about him other than being one or two fans away from getting his autograph before he retreated into the dugout, but I didn't look into his story until recently, after wondering why a Giants blogger was so interested in the guy. Turns out, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in his rookie year. Despite that, he still hung around the Majors for five years, before having to retire at 27 due to the condition.

He remains active in the baseball world, and as an advocate for the disease. I'm not sure whether any of his cards reference this, but to have a Major League career of any length while battling that is quite amazing.

2010 Upper Deck Tape Measure Shots #TMS-20 Ian Stewart

1955 Bowman, and 1962 and 1987 Topps will always be the woodgrain sets, but there are insert sets that carry on the theme. Fleer's Lumber Company comes to mind, but not as much as this UD insert card from 2010. This year was the end of Upper Deck's presence in the baseball card market, which is unfortunate, to say the least. This is a pretty cool card, and I especially like the details of the exact date. UD has always been really good at helping collectors date cards, even if they took it way overboard with their 5,000-card Documentary set.

464 feet is a pretty impressive distance to hit a ball. That's about a 7-iron for me.

2014 Topps Opening Day Stars #ODS-7 Carlos Gonzalez

I'll close with one of the few sets I knew existed before this package arrived. I have a few cards from this 3D insert set found in 2014 Opening Day. And I should, since I bought two blasters of the stuff. Still, though the Rockies were well-represented in the Opening Day Stars insert set, CarGo and Tulo's cards have eluded me until now. I think. Unless they're in the 5,000 count box that these fifty-plus trades have been going into for the past couple years.

I have lots of binder work to do, especially since I'm now a #SuperTrader.

But not as super as Wes.