The Trading Post #91: My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones

Even though I've been in a little bit of a blogging hibernation, trade packages have continued to roll in. I figure now that baseball is starting back up, with spring training games and the World Baseball Classic being played, my focus might return to blogging. Having a sporting event of some kind on TV, especially baseball, is a muse of sorts. The period between the NFL season ending and baseball season beginning is a bit of a slow time, especially since the Colorado Avalanche have been completely atrocious this year.

Fortunately, the Rockies are looking pretty good in spring training, even with a couple of their star players opting to get up to speed via the WBC this year instead. One of those players, Carlos Gonzalez, is facing off against Italy as I write this. The colorful colors of his home country of Venezuela don't feature pinstripes, but CarGo's day job as a Colorado Rockie offer a 50 percent chance that one of his relic cards will contain a purple pinstripe.

2016 Topps Scouting Report Relics #SRR-CGN Carlos Gonzalez S2 (MEM)

Mark from My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones found just such a card, a sharp relic from 2016 Topps. The pinstripe is lined up just perfectly on the swatch, and there still is something cool about these, especially if you suspend the cynicism and trust that this really is part of a jersey that Gonzalez wore. I've seen a few of these where the pinstripe is partially obscured by the edge of the window, or even in there a little crooked. Topps' quality control on this one certainly succeeded.

2010 Topps Update More Tales of the Game #MTOG-8 Mile-High Humidor

The other card Mark sent is one I've seen before, but it still shows what makes Colorado baseball so unique. In fact, if you can consider this a Rockies card, this is probably the single Rockies card that I see most often on non-Rockie blogs. I'd really like to go on a tour of Coors Field one of these days and see this in person. But even if I don't get that chance, it has succeeded in lowering the scores at Coors Field and turning the place into less of a launching pad. One-run games have become more commonplace at 20th & Blake, or at least the 14-9 affairs less common. The Rockies do need to do a little better in one-run games this season, but so far in spring training, that has looked promising.

I'm not sure if they have a humidor at the Triple-A Albuquerque park, but given that the Rockies selected it for the top of their farm system, it would make sense to try to replicate the conditions players would find in Denver. That's partly why Albuquerque was chosen in the first place. It's similarly dry and at a high elevation.

But the mountains are on the wrong side.

1988 Donruss Stan Musial Puzzle #55 Musial Puzzle 55-57

Another small trade came in from Peter at Baseball Every Night, a handful of puzzle cards from 1988 Donruss. I've yet to pop them out of their frame to see if they line up and match the color better with the Stan Musial puzzle pieces I recently completed, but it will be worth a try once I work up the courage to take the fragile collectible out of its sheet protector.

Thanks to Mark and Peter for keeping the trading going over the winter!

The Trading Post #57: My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones

There isn't room for everyone in the SuperTraders group, but that hasn't stopped trades from arriving from elsewhere in the Cardsphere. You might call My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones from Mark a newcomer, but he celebrates his one-year anniversary today! Join me in congratulating Mark on this milestone!

2014 Topps Archives #177 Carlos Gonzalez

CarGo seems happy about it, as he appears on a Topps Archives card based on the 1989 design. It's definitely no Stadium Club, but this set keeps growing on me year after year. There's just something so distinctive about the feel of Archives' card stock, which really helps differentiate them. Especially when it's an expansion team, it breathes new life into designs we've seen ten million times, and they even seem to use recycled photos less frequently than in other Topps sets.

Not that anyone would think one this is an original 1989 card, but there's not much risk of confusion anyway, unlike with the glossy reprints of very recent cards found in Cards Your Mom Threw Out and 60 Years of Topps sets. Night Owl made a point of how tough it is to tell the originals from the reprints on a series of Mike Piazza cards last week.

2015 Topps Archives #162 Nolan Arenado

Plus, it helps me learn the old designs a bit better. I can pick out the mid-'80s and on quite easily, but many 1970s sets confuse me. Is this Arenado supposed to be based on 1973, 1976, or 1979? '73 and '76 both have a little player outline in the lower corner, but both '76 and '79 have solid-colored bars at the bottom. A quick Google Image search confirms that it's 1976. And all the little pennants in 1974, 1977, and 1980 tend to throw me too.

So Archives is helping educate this collector that came up in the overproduction era, one who had allowance money for packs of 1991 Score and 1993 Fleer, but not for much in the way of vintage.

1995 Stadium Club #618 Larry Walker TA

Another day, another subset from 1995 Stadium Club that I've never seen before. Like the Extreme Corps card that came from Wes, apparently TSC made a Trans Action subset in their High Numbers release that year. News to me. I like the color scheme on this one a bit more than Extreme Corps card.

1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond #483 Ellis Burks

Ellis Burks, a member of the Blake Street Bombers with Larry Walker, gets an action shot on 1994 Upper Deck, breaking a three-card string of Guys Resting Bats On Their Shoulders. I'm guessing this is a spring training shot, as there's an obvious A's fan in the crowd, and the Rockies didn't wear black jerseys in the regular season until many seasons later.

Cards like this make me miss Upper Deck. The sparkly finish on Electric Diamond cards predated Topps' Sparkle parallels by almost two decades. Topps has always been my favorite manufacturer, but it would be really nice to have some competition in the market.

2015 Stadium Club #32 Nolan Arenado

Still, the return of Stadium Club does help ease UD's passing, as the look of pure joy on Arenado's face puts this card head and shoulders above all the pitchers' straining faces we've seen in Topps Base for like five straight years. The only downside is that the same Arenado photo on the back can be found on at least three Topps cards.

2010 Topps Chrome #143 Troy Tulowitzki

I've been known to buy a pack or two of Topps Chrome. Some years are shinier than others, but in my opinion 2010 was the worst for "the curl". Curling on the horizontal axis isn't so terrible, and we're all pretty much used to it by now, but on the vertical axis it gets kind of weird, and many of the cards from a blaster I once bought of this are pretty much curled from the lower left to the upper right. Even now, I can glance over at my rows of binders and know exactly where my 2010 Topps Chrome cards are, since they don't lay flat and cause the pages to bulge.

2007 Upper Deck Spectrum #62 Todd Helton

They just keep getting shinier from here on out. This is from Upper Deck Spectrum, and it's one heck of a base card. Shiny silver with a hint of rainbow, vertical black borders (sort of like the 2007 UD base set), and a reflective Tron-like surface on the bottom. I'll have to find a way to squeeze this into my 2007 Upper Deck binder pages, which are already filled with what feels like a dozen and a half sets they made that year.

2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition #17 Charlie Blackmon

Pre-beard Charlie Blackmon gets a card in the shiniest Donruss Elite set I can recall. I'm more familiar with their recent sets, and they used a lot more red in those. I can't quite place his uniform though. None of the Rockies' minor league clubs have cities or names that could match "JACK".

Maybe it means Jackpot, since starting in outfield for the Rockies was pretty close to my childhood idea of winning the lottery.

That, or owning my own jet airplane.

2013 Finest #12 Carlos Gonzalez

Though CarGo's road uniform doesn't look quite as striking as Tulo's purple pinstripes, 2013 Finest fits well with the other shiny silver cards Mark sent my way. The hexagonal theme of 2003 Finest remains one of my top three favorite Finest designs (along with that gorgeous green of 1994). The rows of circles on this design look a little bit like one of those mesh park benches, or a Connect Four game board.

2008 SPx #30 Matt Holliday

Die-cut cards seem more appealing every time I run across one, and Upper Deck did a stellar job with this one. The shading seen in each corner really makes this look like it's a two-layer card. Of course, there's a nice rainbow finish and cute little baseballs in each corner, but I am super impressed with this card. Every time I touch the corner I expect to feel another edge, although the visual effect isn't quite as pronounced on the back due to the lack of shininess.

My scanner never feels the same way about die-cuts, as it has enough trouble auto-cropping a perfect rectangle. But I'll appreciate this one for a long time to come.

Finally, I'll be doing a mail run in the next day or two, to recipients both on and off the #Supertraders list. Check the below list for your ZIP/Postal code!

07044
02766
13601
14222
20904
27314
28590
29730
29841
45067
55406
60706
70062
78125
79083
87499
N2H 5M5

Thanks for reading!

The Trading Post #43: My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones

It's been a while since I started a new trading relationship, but I'm always reminded how fun it is to swap cards with other collectors. Mark from My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones commented on a recent post offering a couple needs from my Eight Men Out want list. Just a few days after a PWE from 2x3 Heroes was delivered, another envelope showed up this weekend, and it had some beauties.

1991 Bowman #410 Bobby Thomson / Ralph Branca / Shot Heard Round the World

Only a couple sets have been in my collection longer than 1991 Bowman, but somehow this iconic card eluded my grasp all these years. The Eight Men Out list comes through again! This was one of the first sets to experiment with gold foil, and it's present on only a few cards, including this one.

Come to think of it, the card backs on this set might be why I like green cards so much. Like the woodgrain design on 1987 Topps influencing my appreciation of 1955 Bowman and 1962 Topps (and thus 2011 Topps Heritage), perhaps green cards just look "right" to some deep-seated part of my brain.

1991 Bowman #410 Bobby Thomson / Ralph Branca / Shot Heard Round the World (Reverse)

With all the monster clutch home runs we've seen so far this postseason, like those from Kyle Schwarber and of course Jose Bautista (topped off with the best bat flip in baseball history), Bobby Thomson and his "Shot Heard 'Round The World" fits right in, despite happening over sixty years ago.

But that wasn't all.

1991 Stadium Club #493 Scott Coolbaugh

This was the last card I needed to complete Series 2 of 1991 Stadium Club! The penultimate card came via trade not long ago, but I can finally cross this one off the list. I don't really know much about Coolbaugh, but he played a few seasons in the majors, and even went over to Japan for a couple years following the 1994 strike. More on that later.

1996 Collector's Choice Silver Signature #753 Bichette / Castilla / Galarraga / Walker CL

Mark stuffed an envelope with close to two dozen cards, including lots of Rockies, like this Silver Signature checklist of the Blake Street Bombers. The Colorado Rockies' Facebook account posted a Throwback Thursday photo of these guys last week, and it is very, very 1990s.

1992 Fleer Ultra #199 Craig Biggio

He also included a small stack of Hall-of-Famers from 1992 Fleer Ultra. This Biggio card is one I could almost draw from memory, but I don't recall that little six-sided pin on top of his hat, despite having seen this card countless times. It's also a quick reminder that Biggio started out as a catcher, something that's commonly forgotten.

1996 Zenith #13 Dante Bichette

The rest of these cards were mostly shiny Rockies. I've seen Zenith before, but never from this 1996 vintage that I can recall. I don't know whether they all have eight gold bats arrayed like a Japanese folding hand fan, but I'll sure remember it now.

1995 Finest #255 Bill Swift

I also got the opportunity to liberate a few Finest cards from their protective peel-off coating, one of the most satisfying simple pleasures of 21st-century American life. Whether it's an iPhone, microwave panel, or 20-year old baseball card, it's like unwrapping a present.

Bill Swift was one of the first high-end free agent pitchers the Rockies signed, before anyone knew that free agent pitchers seem not to make it in Coors Field. Swift and Bret Saberhagen were the first to set that precedent.

1995 SP #51 Vinny Castilla

The position players on the Rockies have almost always been the highlights, going all the way back to an inaugural Rockie, Vinny Castilla. He was a third baseman, but he's clearly covering second base to turn two, and doing a good job of it, despite Bip Roberts' non-leg-breaking takeout slide.

For a "Super Premium" card, it's on the thin side, but makes great use of gold and blue foil. That blue foil features a whole lattice of SP logos when they catch the light just right, which shows up quite nicely in the scan.

1995 Topps Cyberstats #71 Walt Weiss

1993 was a tough year to be a budding baseball fan. The 1993 season was great, ending with Joe Carter's walkoff home run in the 1993 World Series, but the infamous strike of 1994 prevented me from seeing another World Series until after Coors Field had opened. It's a giant shame, especially since the Montreal Expos were having a fantastic season and were far from a long shot to win it all.

1995 Topps did what it could with that disgraceful period in baseball history, making a partial set of CyberStats parallels with a special foil on the front.

1995 Topps Cyberstats #71 Walt Weiss (Reverse)

The back of these parallels include "computer-simulated" statistics, projecting what would have happened had the final six or seven weeks of the 1994 season occurred. No one expected Weiss to improve on his single real-life home run of 1994, but Barry Bonds' card in this set suggested that he might have tied Roger Maris' 61 home runs. I find this scenario highly unlikely, given that Bonds only had 37 when play stopped. But we'll never know whether Maris' record (or even his asterisk) would have fallen, or if the Expos would have brought Canada its third World Series trophy in as many years.

Matt Williams was sitting much prettier at 43 home runs, so if the record were to fall, it probably would have been a different Giant than Topps thought. But who knows? One thing's for sure. Whether Bonds, Williams, or Maris held the single-season home run record at the end of a complete 1994 season, Topps Cyberstats never would have existed.

Cool cards, but I'd have preferred a full season.