The Trading Post #139: Big Shep's Cards (Part 3: Other Brands)

I promised Pacific, so here's some Pacific.

1999 Pacific Omega #157 Robin Ventura

Compared to 1998, Pacific didn't change the design much for the Omega brand in 1999. The major difference is that there are no baseball seams separating the various design elements. A less major change is that the area on the right now uses the left photograph in shiny form, rather than the central action shot as in 1998. It's still pretty hard to see but the scanner picks it up reasonably well.

In short, this is definitely a Pacific card.

What it's not is a Rockies card. There were White Sox in my two previous posts covering a shipment from Big Shep's Cards, and I chalked it up to the similar uniforms worn by the Rockies and White Sox. I don't have an explanation for why Robin Ventura as a Met ended up in this package, other than that he began his career with the White Sox. Famously so, in fact, as he was with Chicago when that infamous brawl with Nolan Ryan took place.

2002 Upper Deck Victory #93 Jeff Cirillo

Not-quite-Rockies-cards have been a theme these past few posts. Just last time, when talking about Jeff Cirillo's Fleer Premium card, I pointed out how it was a true Rockies card, unlike his card in the follow up set the next year. For such a briefly-tenured Rockie, he actually ended up with some pretty great cards. But it didn't last long, as he was traded to the Seattle Mariners after just two seasons, part of the trade that sent Brian Fuentes to the Rockies.

Upper Deck noted this transaction in the 2002 release of their no-frills Victory set, a 660-card beast unencumbered by things like relics, autographs, and even insert sets. The photography isn't quite as good, but the set kept the spirit of Collector's Choice alive for a few more years beyond 1999.

The card back clearly lists Cirillo as a Mariner, and mentions his 11-game hitting streak as a Rockie toward the end of the 2001 season, a post-9/11 homestand during which I saw two games. We all had other things on our mind at that time, and I hadn't given much thought to Jeff Cirillo's hitting streak. In the September 29th game, the penultimate home game of the year and a classic 14-12 pre-humidor Coors Field slugfest, I recall Denny Neagle hitting a grand slam, and my sister dropping her Dippin' Dots spoon down to the level below us.

The card back mentions that Cirillo had a trio of three-hit games during that stretch. That was one of them. The game I saw a few days prior on September 26th was another, which was one of Tony Gwynn's final games.

1993 Donruss #790 Jerald Clark

Speaking of Gwynn, expansion draftee Jerald Clark got to play with him for several years before becoming an inaugural Rockie. 1993 Donruss included lots of Rockies and Marlins in their Series 2 release, just like Topps, but didn't have a chance to actually obtain photos of any expansion players in their new uniforms. They used the retro Rockies logo before it underwent slight revisions, which I've written about before. Basically, the colors on the upper arch were changed from purple-on-gray to gray-on-black, and the baseball's motion lines were lengthened.

1993 Topps didn't do much with official team logos, except for the back of the Rockies and Marlins dual-player prospect cards. There's a tiny team logo in the upper right, which is a weird mash-up of the longer motion lines but the old color scheme. Have a look:

1993 Topps #537 Jason Hutchins (RC) / Ryan Turner (Reverse)

Ryan Turner, by the way, is the first Rockie to appear on a baseball card, sneaking into both 1992 Upper Deck and 1992 Bowman.

Getting back to Jerald Clark, sharing the outfield with an all-time great like Gwynn must have been a fantastic experience. Clark never got to go to an All-Star game, although his team hosted the Midsummer Classic in 1992, documented by a large home plate-themed patch on his left sleeve. Flip the card over and you'll get an even better look at it.

That game was held at what was then known as Jack Murphy Stadium, the home of the Padres from their inception in 1969 until the beautiful Petco Park opened until 2004, just the fourth Major League stadium I've had a chance to visit. During the tech boom of the late 1990s, The Murph, as it's still locally known, was renamed Qualcomm Stadium, and remained the home of the San Diego Chargers until they moved northward to Los Angeles in 2017. Qualcomm Stadium was also the place where the Broncos finally won a Super Bowl, XXXII in early 1998. It remains standing, and is the home of the SDSU Aztecs, who once played a basketball game atop the deck of the USS Midway.

1994 Score #197 Danny Sheaffer

Everyone was in their proper uniforms and logos when the 1994 sets hit shelves, but we aren't quite done with San Diego yet. Just a year after they hosted the All-Star Game (and long before the mustard yellow and brown of 2016), the Padres celebrated their 25th Anniversary with another patch, which we can see on the sleeve of a sliding Guillermo Velasquez, who is making a cameo on Danny Sheaffer's card.

Velasquez played part of two seasons with the Padres, mainly off the bench. He appeared in relatively few games, allowing me to pinpoint this photo with complete confidence. It happened on August 8th, 1993 in the bottom of the 4th. Velasquez walked with two outs, advanced to second on a Mo Sanford balk, then was thrown out at home while testing the arm of Dante Bichette, who cleanly fielded a hit by Archi Cianfrocco and fired the ball back in to Sheaffer. That series of events allowed Score to snap a great action shot for the 1994 set, and gave Danny Sheaffer his Infield Fly Rule debut.

This is the first three-part post to appear in The Trading Post theme, and it's covered all the major brands that operated in the baseball card world during the Rockies' existence. Score isn't the most stellar representative of Pinnacle Brands, but it certainly counts and gave us better sets than a lot of people give them credit for.

1998 Score Rookie/Traded #RT78 Vinny Castilla

Years later, in 1998, Score was still snapping some fun photographs shortly before their bankruptcy. Mario wrote an excellent post about the fall of Pinnacle a few days ago, which chronicles a dark period in card collecting. That insolvency also meant the end of the Score brand as we knew it, a real shame.

This Vinny Castilla card looks a lot like a normal 1998 Score card, but the inverted blacks and grays (just like the old Rockies logo!) signify this is actually from the 1998 Rookie/Traded set, even though Castilla was neither a rookie nor traded. The card back has the lengthy write-up typical of Score, which mentions how well he hit lefties in 1997, and the statistics offered a very early hint at the Sabermetrics movement, including columns for Total Bases, On Base Percentage, and Slugging Percentage. They were still in the realm of traditional statistics, but were at least digging a little more deeply than just the usual stats found on baseball cards for decades.

This card would fit well into many mini-collections, thanks to Castilla being shown signing autographs. Even under magnification, I can't tell what set he is signing, but if I had to venture a guess, I think it's one of those perforated sheets of kid-oriented police safety cards. You know, the oddballs that have a color photo on one side and things like "Don't Do Drugs" and "Never Swim Alone" on the back, that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure I had a set like that when I was a kid, but it's likely one of the few parts of my collection that hasn't survived the years.

Not that I am spending a lot of time swimming with no lifeguard on duty anyway, no siree, not me.

1997 Collector's Choice Teams #CR Colorado Rockies Logo CL

You knew it was coming. We have arrived at the shiny section of the post.

Part of this stack included a large quantity of 1997 Collector's Choice. I see that set in trade packages often. However, flipping these over greeted me with some unusual card numbers. "CR 2", "CR 10", and so on. Clearly, they were from a team set, and this shiny card with a fully-fledged Rockies logo on the front is actually the team checklist. Not counting this one, there are thirteen cards, and it includes all the big Blake Street Bomber names of the day. Larry Walker, Vinny Castilla, Dante Bichette, and more. The card says that the 1996 Rockies were the first-ever team with both 200 home runs and 200 stolen bases, as well as a mention of the game in which they put up an 11-spot on July 12th against the Padres.

I have a vague recollection of that game. I wasn't there, but I remember watching a couple wild ones before going away to Boy Scout camp for a week that summer.

2004 Upper Deck Power Up #74 Preston Wilson

Caricature cards have never been my favorite. The subset from 1993 Score is as good as it needs to be. They look cartoony enough to be sort of fun, but they're not my cup of tea.

So when Upper Deck comes along and comically enlarges a player's head on a photograph, the results are downright terrifying. This card looks like a genetic lab experiment gone wrong. right down to the radioactive green sludge on the background. There's also a 9-character code on the right side, presumably for some type of online game. Confusingly, I happen to have another copy of this card in my collection already, and the code is exactly the same, so I have no idea what's going on here.

Preston Wilson did have quite a few RBI by the 2003 All-Star break, if you can read the strange font, that is. At least there's a shiny area.

1999 SP Top Prospects #103 Ben Petrick

On a much more serious note, MLB has its sights set on contracting Minor League Baseball. Night Owl wrote a great post about the minors last week, and if you're on Twitter, you're surely no stranger to the recent debate. I'll say what I'd say about any multi-billion dollar organization who isn't paying employees a living wage. Share the wealth. If Scott Boras can line up almost a billion dollars in the space of a week for a half-dozen or so of his top guys, then surely there's funding to ensure that playing professional baseball is a suitable career path, even if you don't make the Majors.

Remember that time Andrew McCutchen's paystub was leaked? Here's the Minor League equivalent.

Anyway, as far as this card goes, it's a sturdy, black-and-gold beauty from SP Top Prospects, showing Ben Petrick as a member of the New Haven Ravens, once a Rockies Double-A affiliate. They have since moved to become the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Flip the card over and you'll see that Petrick began his Single-A career with Salem, then known as the Avalanche. They're still in Salem, now called the Salem Red Sox.

Maybe Petrick was just that good of a prospect before he ran into health issues, but it seems like I have more minor league cards of Petrick than anyone.

1995 SP Silver #15 Juan Acevedo

A few years prior, Juan Acevedo made it into the main release of Upper Deck's SP brand. This die-cut is actually the Silver parallel from the Premier Prospects subset. He had yet to reach the big leagues, but UD still has him pictured in a real Rockies road uniform, certainly from the same photo shoot as his base 1995 Upper Deck card.

As a bonus, the card back has a photo of him bunting! It's another mini-collection hit!

1994 Upper Deck #270 Andres Galarraga HFA

We just went through quite a few Upper Deck cards without seeing any copper, and now that we're seeing the 1994 base set, we finally get some, although it's ink instead of foil. I don't think I've ever shown it on the blog, but this might be my most commonly-seen card in all of 1994 Upper Deck. I've seen base versions of it numerous times, but Shep managed to find the Electric Diamond parallel for me, printed near the dimensions of Mile High Stadium, roughly where I sat for most of my trips to the defunct ballpark.

What we're seeing is the Home Field Advantage subset from 1994 Upper Deck, featuring Andres Galarraga. This subset wrapped up Series 1 with National League teams, and continued in Series 2 with the American League teams. On the back, there are plenty of fun facts about the stadium, including the obvious difference between the left- and right-field distances down the line, the fact that fly balls travel farther, and even a brief mention of Coors Field.

We're told that at the time, the Rockies were one of eight teams to share a home with an NFL team. Now, following the conclusion of the Oakland A's season, there are no more shared stadiums across baseball and football, as the Raiders are moving to Las Vegas.

In addition to all that, there are also home and road splits for both Galarraga and the Rockies as a whole. They crammed a lot in on the back, partially because the front is pretty sparse. Go find the base card and you won't even see that sparkly Electric Diamond text.

2001 Upper Deck MVP #323 Ron Gant

2002 Upper Deck MVP is one of my favorite black-bordered sets ever. 2001 had a bit more gray in there, actually quite similar to 1998 Score. There's a little bit of silver foil, too. Other than the MVP logo itself, it's done up in tasteful thin silver lines. Less is more with a design like this.

This is a double-debut post, as Ron Gant is joining Danny Sheaffer as members of the Infield Fly Rule club. I definitely remember Sheaffer, but Ron Gant as a Rockie is a lot fuzzier in my mind. He played here for less than sixty games in 2001. I remember him much more clearly as a Brave.

Upper Deck made a prediction on this card, expecting him to reach the 300-homer mark in 2001. When the Rockies traded him in July, he had precisely 300 home runs, adding two more on with Oakland to close the season. His career ended two years later, finishing up with 321, just two less than this card number.

I'm sure he wasn't chasing his card number.

If you celebrate it, enjoy your Hanukkah, which begins tonight. Otherwise, have a great Christmas or any other holiday you choose. Thanks for reading!

The Trading Post #14: The Lost Collector

Shortly before Christmas (yes, I am a little behind on trade posts), a package arrived from The Lost Collector who specializes in Yankees. Thanks to my dad's boyhood home of pre-Mets Queens, I've been instilled with an affinity for the Yankees, and I was able to send some good stuff to The Lost Collector.

The trade package I got in return had gems like these:

2004 Topps Opening Day #130 Larry Walker

Much discussion has occurred about the conspicuous (and often welcome) absence of foil in Topps Opening Day. These days, it's the primary differentiator between it and the Topps base set, aside from that little red, white, and blue banner that appears on each card, as well as some pretty great inserts. As you can (somewhat) clearly see in the above, this was not always the case. Remember 2000 Opening Day with its freakishly huge silver seal?

2000 Topps Opening Day #85 Chipper Jones

In addition to the use of foil, many not-that-long-ago releases of Opening Day had different-colored borders, such as a red border in 2008, and a simple white border in 2007 that I think looks way better than the black-bordered and relatively unloved 2007 base set.

2007 Topps Opening Day #131 Orlando Cabrera

Another card from 2004 that The Lost Collector included is this copper-foil Upper Deck card (a metallic finish that UD seemed to love):

2004 UD Diamond All-Star #30 Preston Wilson

I don't recall having seen this set before it came via this trade, but I've already run across a few others like it in other trade packages I received shortly after this one.

Preston's swing has quite the follow-through, doesn't it?

Those were some of the newer cards he sent over, though there was a 2005 Opening Day (with blue foil) and a card from 2014 Update. There was a good bit of 1990s shininess as well.

1996 Metal Universe #158 Bill Swift

I'm not sure I really get what this set is all about. BaseballCardPedia says it's supposed to blend in comic book elements. Regardless, it definitely is...different. Those chains are unique to Swift's card; each of the 249 other cards had their own design elements.

1996 Fleer Tiffany # 373 Bruce Ruffin

This card from 1996 Fleer isn't particularly shiny by itself. It only gains a relative shininess when you remember that 1996 and 1997 Fleer had a matte finish, which really stood out in the UV-coated 1990s. It's from the "Tiffany" parallel set, which came one-per-pack. Strangely, I have about as many Tiffany cards as standard base cards from this set. That year, Fleer also made 20-card Team Sets for nine teams including the Rockies. They had a glossy coating but lacked the refractor finish on the foil.

Couldn't hurt to show the matte base card of recent Hall of Fame inductee Craig Biggio, who holds the MLB record for most hit-by-pitches, surpassing Don Baylor shortly before his retirement.

1996 Fleer #402 Craig Biggio

Next, a little more mid-90s goodness from one of my favorite parallel sets, Upper Deck Collector's Choice Silver Signature.

1995 Collector's Choice Silver Signature #443 Walt Weiss

That 125th Anniversary patch keeps showing up! There are many horizontal cards to be found in Collector's Choice, but the orientation of the signature is a little strange, especially since all the other elements are rotated correctly, even the brand logo.

On the earliest Rockies and Marlins cards, it's common to find a player listed as a Rockie but shown in a previous uniform, like submariner Steve Reed as a Giant.

1993 Fleer #414 Steve Reed (RC)

1993 Topps Series 2 saw some actual Rockies uniforms, but we had to wait for 1993 Fleer Final Edition to see a true Rockie in this design, one of the first that I collected.

1993 Fleer Final Edition #F-40 Steve Reed

Judging by the backgrounds, there were quite a few more fans watching Reed as a Rockie than as a Giant.

1993 Triple Play #154 Dante Bichette

In addition to the unfamiliar Brewers uniform, Dante Bichette's card from 1993 Triple Play even has a very early Rockies logo that was changed before they ever played their first game. The current logo differs in that the baseball is shown to travel farther, the arch is black instead of silver, and the lettering on the arch is silver instead of purple.

1998 Fleer Ultra #145 Dante Bichette

There, that's more like it, although it does look mighty cold out there at Wrigley. According to Baseball Reference, the Rockies made a two-game stop in Chicago in mid-April 1997. This photograph is most likely from that short series.

On the topic of well-attended stadiums, this last card shows Mile High Stadium packed to the gills with Rockies fans, where they played in 1993 and 1994 while Coors Field was under construction.

1994 Score #650 Checklist / Colorado Rockies

This is probably from the home opener on April 9th, 1993, when the Rockies packed 80,000+ fans into a stadium with a capacity of 76,000. Standing room only, anyone? The Rockies attracted almost 4.5 million fans that year, myself included (twice), a record that still stands today. The Rockies themselves might have broken their own record in 1994 if the infamous strike hadn't occurred.

As usual, I had trouble narrowing this down to just a few cards, made more difficult by the few non-Rockies cards that snuck in here for illustrative purposes. Thanks for reading as I continue to catch up on trade posts from many new trading partners!

The Trading Post #8: A Cracked Bat

I mentioned recently that Jared of Catching up with Collecting forwarded a few Rockies cards from Julie at A Cracked Bat that were meant for me. They took a circuitous route to get to me, but arrive safely they did. That makes Julie the first blogger with a repeat appearance in "The Trading Post" series, though I do have one more pending.

Julie's first trade package included several cards from 1994 Pinnacle, but one must have missed the boat.

1994 Pinnacle #103 Jerald Clark

Outfielder Jerald Clark appears here in a great "at the wall" shot in the old Mile High Stadium, complete with Bronco Orange plastic seats. When they tore down that stadium, they sold off most of the seats to collectors; it's not uncommon to find a pair in various finished basements across the Denver area.

Close examination of this card shows a fan wearing a Buffaloes sweatshirt, the mascot of my alma mater, The University of Colorado. Denver-area sports are quite well-represented on this card, along with a very prominent Cubs logo.

Julie threw in a small handful of early 2000s cards, including what I believe to be only my second card of catcher Ben Petrick.

2001 Stadium Club #173 Ben Petrick

Petrick made an appearance in the 2002 Topps base set, but I am fairly certain that I don't have any others. I'm not much of a player collector, but doubling the size of a PC in one shot is always nice.

I recall Ben Petrick signing autographs on the first base side at Coors Field before one Rockies game, but there were just one or two fans ahead of me when he left for the dugout. Just as well, because I surely didn't have a card of him handy.

Next, one which is a little older than I thought at first glance, but it's just a year after Larry Walker made a pretty serious run at the Triple Crown in 1997.

1998 Leaf Rookies & Stars #52 Larry Walker

I've never purchased a pack of 1998 Leaf Rookies & Stars, but I've managed to acquire quite a few cards from that set. It turns up surprisingly frequently in discount boxes and bulk purchases. The Blake Street Bombers were a sight to see in the mid- to late-90s, and Walker might have been the best of the bunch. He had quite an arm, too.

The bulk of this package consisted of 1994 Bowman. This was shortly before seemingly every Bowman card in production had a black border with an uninspired design, but it's still chock full of players I've never heard of. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

1994 Bowman #404 Mike Zolecki (RC)

This is an appropriate design for the era. As we all know, gold foil (which doesn't scan well) was all the rage. Mike Zolecki was drafted by the Rockies in 1993, but never made it to The Show.

1994 Bowman #356 John Burke (FOIL)

John Burke, on the other hand, did spend a couple years in the Majors, but the reason I am featuring his card is for the "FOIL" subset, which can be identified by a different back and the slightly raised imprint of the Rockies team logo on the front. Bowman reserved this style for some of the more promising players and superstars in the set, and it really is pretty eye-catching, even for 1994.

One last thing I noticed while thumbing through these cards was a strangely long-looking name on Ellis Burks' card.

1994 Bowman #414 Ellis Burks (UER)

Bowman was so busy making cards of players that never made it out of Double-A that they threw in an extra letter on Burks' card, misspelling his first name "Ellkis". As us techie types tend to notice, "K" is quite near "I" on a QWERTY keyboard, so it was probably a simple typo. This error was not corrected, and his name is spelled correctly on the back. I love finding little details like this!

Thanks to Julie for the cards, and a Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers!