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

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

2008 Upper Deck #483 Matt Holliday

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

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

2000 Fleer Focus #205 Dante Bichette

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

2000 Fleer Focus #110 Darryl Kile

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

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

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

2000 Upper Deck Victory #66 Henry Blanco

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

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

2003 Upper Deck Vintage #181 Preston Wilson

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

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

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

2002 Upper Deck Vintage #270 Larry Walker TC

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

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

2002 SP Authentic #90 Mike Hampton

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

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

2002 Upper Deck #721 Denny Neagle

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

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

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

2003 Fleer Tradition #165 Juan Pierre

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

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

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

2000 Ultra #44 Neifi Perez

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

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

2002 Fleer Maximum #61 Juan Uribe

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

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

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

1995 Ultra Gold Medallion #159 Eric Young

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

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

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

And I helped.

1993 SP #221 Joe Girardi

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

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

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

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

1995 Studio #149 Joe Girardi

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

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

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

1997 Cracker Jack #10 Gary Sheffield

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

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

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

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

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

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

2002 Fleer Authentix #115 Todd Hollandsworth

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

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

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

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

2003 Fleer Authentix #59 Jeff Bagwell

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

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

1998 UD3 #166 Dante Bichette EE

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

1993 Score #428 Dante Bichette

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

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

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

Anyone know where I can score some Score?

Christmas in July

One of my favorite aspects of this wonderful community is all the mini-collections people go for. I'm not just talking about team or player collectors, I mean the guys who focus parts of their collection on really specific things, like night cards, for example. Some collectors like memorial and commemorative patches. Others prefer all-dirt cards. A few have too many to count, ranging from kids on cards to photographic equipment, and from broken bats to the act of signing autographs. Myself, I like Coors Field cards. It's just something that gives us each our own personality.

Of course, one of the favorite mini-collections throughout the Cardsphere also happens to be my girlfriend's least-favorite aspect of baseball.

1995 Collector's Choice SE #163 Trevor Hoffman

Bunting.

Usually you're trying to advance a runner. Maybe you can get up the line like a speeding bullet. Perhaps you just plain can't hit. On rare occasions, your guy on third is trying to nab home plate if you can just put the ball just barely in play.

But whatever the reason, it makes for a relatively unusual card. And us baseball card bloggers seem to go nuts for them.

JediJeff, over at 2x3 Heroes, offered cards from a few of his mini collections as part of his 'Tis The Season annual giveaway last year. As in 2015, it's taken me more than a few months to get the related post up, but at least there are lots of great cards to pick from.

Trevor Hoffman's career was just getting off the ground in 1995, on his way to 601 career saves. He was the all-time leader for a few years until Mariano Rivera caught up. He was just a few votes shy of being a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer this year, but he should make it after another vote or two.

His legendary performance as a closer makes it all the more unusual to see him bunting on this 1995 UD Collector's Choice Special Edition card, as usually only the starters have to suffer through a couple plate appearances. Unless a starter is chased from a game early, or the game has dragged far into the double-digit innings, most managers just stick a pinch hitter in there when a reliever is due up, maybe coinciding with a double switch.

I collected this set as a kid, and it was right up there with 1994 Fleer Ultra and Topps Gold parallels as one of my favorite sets. Even with all the colored borders that Topps uses, I can't recall one quite this shade of blue, other than maybe the 2003 Topps base set. But that didn't have a fancy blue foil stamp on it.

1995 Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion #60 Brian McRae

Brian McRae, son of fellow Royal player and manager Hal McRae, doesn't have quite the right bunting form. The photographer probably captured a split second in which Brian was repositioning his hands. But this card has a fancy foil stamp too, signifying that it's a Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion parallel. These have shown up here before, and as I didn't buy much 1995 Ultra, the Gold Medallion cards might be coming close to rivaling the count of base cards I have from that set.

1999 UD Ionix #60 Jose Cruz Jr.

Along with 1996 Stadium Club, 1995 Ultra was one of the last products I remember buying before getting away from baseball cards for a while. Had I stayed with it longer, cards like UD Ionix might not seem so alien to me. There is a lot going on with this design, and some of the elements are raised. The dot pattern in the background reminds me of...something. Maybe 2013 Finest? And if you look closely enough you might even spot the player's name and team.

I never liked this look of Blue Jays uniforms. I'm glad they decided to return to their more traditional logo and lettering. Then again, the regular Jays jerseys on a card like this wouldn't work either. So it's all for the best, I suppose.

1994 Topps Archives 1954 #34 Jim Rivera

1954 Topps Archives took a classic and gave it a more modern treatment. It has a glossy coating, as nearly everything had in 1994. But they also scaled it down to a standard size, as the original '54s were slightly larger, roughly as big as a 1989 Bowman card, or one from the Topps Big series. They also added a top border, something not found on the originals due the way they were laid out on the sheet.

According to the back, it turns out that Jim Rivera was quite the base stealer and a "speedster", so it makes sense that he'd be pictured bunting on the first Topps set containing action photos. I don't know the pre-war sets very well, but I'd wager that the original is the first card to contain an actual photograph of a player bunting. It might be posed, but this very card could have kicked off one of the top mini-collection subjects in the hobby today.

1993 Fleer Ultra #310 Otis Nixon

Otis Nixon, the Braves' main leadoff guy in the early '90s, shows up a lot on these bunting cards. He's clearly a switch hitter because of the helmet with ear flaps on both sides. Juan Pierre used to wear one, but you don't really see these much any more at the Major League level. I guess teams are starting to spring for two batting helmets with a single ear flap for their switch hitters. After all, what's a few hundred bucks when the player is probably making seven figures?

I used to buy packs of 1993 Ultra when it was on the shelves, even though it was a bit pricey. Still, thanks to that early exposure, I'm one of those rare types that can tell 1993 Ultra apart from 1992. And I always liked the way Fleer's card numbers matched each team's players alphabetically. It makes for quick organizing after you've ensured the set is complete.

1993 Donruss #262 Otis Nixon

Another Nixon card, this time in his home jersey, further illustrates his versatility. He's hitting from the right side of the plate in this one, and even though he's a step further away from first base, it looks like he's already got a running start.

1991 Upper Deck #91 Tom Pagnozzi

I don't know exactly what's happening here, but this is one of the most awkward bunts I've ever seen. It might be a situation where he must put the ball in play because there's a suicide squeeze on. But that's an extraordinarily rare play, and it looks like he just fouled it off anyway. Why you wouldn't let this one go for a ball instead of chasing it like a hockey face-off is beyond me. But this is why we like these bunting cards, isn't it?

2002 Donruss Originals #276 Bernie Williams 86

Bunting is more of a National League thing, at least in the designated-hitter era. So it's odd to see a consistent contact hitter in the AL square up to bunt. And even though Williams is a switch hitter (and a fine musician), the Yankees clearly have separate helmets for left-handed and right-handed hitting. Winning four World Series in five years will get you that kind of a perk.

For this 2002 set, Donruss took some of their most well-known sets from the '80s and reused the designs for a 425-card set. I have a few of these, including Todd Helton's card, but I don't see them too often. I'm sure that they get mixed in with cards from the actual year, and you have to have an eagle eye to spot them if you're leafing through a discount box with other Donruss cards you've seen countless times. They feel a little different, and the print quality is significantly better, but if you don't know what you're looking for, you might just flip right past it.

2008 Upper Deck #118 Omar Vizquel

Finally, Jeff threw in a single card from another of his mini-collection offerings, the double play. As a middle infielder myself during my two short years of little league, I have a certain appreciation for these cards. And like we saw with Tulowitzki's 2012 Topps Mini, they offer a great opportunity for cameos (also a mini-collection topic). Orlando Hudson of the Diamondbacks is trying to take out veteran Omar Vizquel, a real NL West showdown.

Vizquel played until the age of 45, and though you wouldn't expect it, he got over 2,800 hits in his long career. If his production hadn't trailed off in his later years, this unassuming middle infielder could have been a member of the exclusive 3,000-hit club, a club which Ichiro is only days away from joining. I guess it's partially because Vizquel played for so long, but he could still hit. I looked up Jamie Moyer's career stats, and he got 269 wins in his 25-year career, a bit short of that magic 300 mark. So these milestones are within reach if you just keep plugging away.

One last thing I'll point out is that Vizquel has a commemorative patch on his right sleeve, marking the year that San Francisco hosted the All-Star Game. He has eye black on, there is an advertisement on the outfield wall, and the cameo is of a division rival.

Any of those topics can start a mini collection, if you're willing to look hard enough. Hoffman's wearing a commemorative patch, Cruz, Nixon, and maybe Hudson have double-eared batting helmets, Nixon's Fleer Ultra card is in Wrigley Field. He has flip-down sunglasses on the back of the Donruss card, and Pagnozzi is wearing his catcher's gear on the back of his.

The possibilities are endless.