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

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

Category 1: Score Gold Rush

1994 Score Gold Rush #336 Alex Cole

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

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

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

1995 Score Gold Rush #588 Jayhawk Owens

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

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

Category 2: Inaugural Rockies Pitchers

1997 Circa #360 Steve Reed

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

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

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

1997 Circa #360 Steve Reed (Reverse)

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

1997 Score Premium Stock #204 Armando Reynoso

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

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

Ruffin, by the way, was another inaugural Rockie.

Category 3: Pitchers Who Rake

2003 Ultra Gold Medallion #26 Mike Hampton

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

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

2003 Donruss #279 Jason Jennings

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

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

Category 4: Rockies at the Plate

2004 Upper Deck #259 Chris Stynes

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

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

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

2010 Upper Deck #176 Ryan Spilborghs

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

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

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

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

Category 5: Great Photos

1997 Ultra #440 Bill Swift

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

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

2000 Pacific Ruby #150 Neifi Perez

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

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

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

2000 Upper Deck #378 Terry Shumpert

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

Category 6: Oddballs

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

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

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

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

1992-93 Ultra #54 Reggie Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1997 Ultra #189 Kevin Ritz

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

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

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

2001 Ultra Tomorrow's Legends #4 Todd Helton

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

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

1993 Ultra Performers #7 David Nied

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

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

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

2001 Fleer Premium #172 Jeff Cirillo

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

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

2001 Fleer Game Time #88 Magglio Ordóñez

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

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

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

2002 E-X #50 Todd Helton

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

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

1997 Fleer Rookie Sensations #17 Neifi Pérez

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

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

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

2003 Fleer Tradition #421 Jason Jennings AW

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

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

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

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

The Trading Post #128: Cards My Mom Didn't Throw Out

It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon, a great spring day with a full slate of baseball games on the schedule. So was yesterday, and while I did spend some time in the great outdoors, I'm sore and sunburned. Even though the weather looks great, I'm spending some time inside today to catch up on trade posts before I catch my first game of the season. The Rockies will be playing at Coors Field this evening, trying to avoid being swept by the Dodgers in their first Sunday Night Baseball home game since 2001.

Win or lose, at least I won't have to listen to Alex Rodriguez announce the game or mispronounce Tony Wolters' name.

There's plenty of time before gametime to get this post up, a small card stack sent by Jared of Cards My Mom Didn't Throw Out. In addition to these cards, Jared also included a sentimental handwritten note, mentioning that he thinks of me anytime he sees Rockies cards, as I was the first person he traded with, way back in late 2015. His blog is still going strong, and I'm flattered to know that I have enough influence in this community to inspire others.

With that, let's see what shiny goodness Jared unearthed.

1998 Finest No-Protectors Refractors #69 Jamey Wright

1998 Topps Finest returned to something resembling normalcy after the fractured set insanity we got in 1997. Jamey Wright's card #69 is just that, card #69. I'm still rather confused about what's happening with this card, though. I'm confident in stating that this is a Refractor card, as it has that unmistakable rainbow look, on both sides in fact. Beckett has a few varieties listed, including some as "No-Protectors". Presumably, these are cards which ship without that clear plastic peel-off coating. I always peel those anyway [insert sunburn joke here], but that doesn't just convert it into the other variety. From what I can tell, the protector cards have a normal back, and the No-Protector cards have the same shiny chrome finish on the back as on the front.

How does that apply to refractors? Similar to the base cards, there are normal refractors, which have a refractor front and a normal back, differentiated only by a tiny "R" next to the card number. What I think Jared found for me is a No-Protector Refractor, as both sides have that glorious shiny rainbow finish.

But here's where this keeps confusing me. Unlike the two normal refractors already in my collection, there's no "R" label on this one. Maybe Topps trusts that you'll be able to figure it out because both sides have the same finish, but then that calls into question two other cards in my collection. Those two have the "R" label, but don't look like refractors at all. If not for that "R" label, I'd group them with the base No-Protectors, because that's what they look like. But that "R" has to mean something, right? For now, I have them separate. Then again, they're clearly different than this Wright card, which lacks the label.

In short, I have all four varieties to be found, but either the labeling is inconsistent, or Topps messed up the card stock somewhere along the line, or both.

Even when it's not a fractured set, these late-'90s cards can really require some investigation to figure out what you have on your hands.

2002 Donruss Best of Fan Club Spotlight #76 Todd Helton /100

The confusion continues with this shiny Todd Helton card from 2002. First and foremost, I've always been a Topps guy. And given the above situation, as well as all that mid-'90s Stadium Club that regularly makes me question my reality, even they can be tough to decipher. So when Donruss parallels of parallels show up from a time when I wasn't collecting, I just admire the color coding and look it up on Beckett again.

Donruss made a set called Fan Club in 2002 for a single year. It has a faint graph paper pattern in the upper right and lower left, as well as some excellent color-coding. There's also a "Best Of" parallel set, which is more or less similar to Topps Chrome in appearance. Both the base and Best Of varieties have their own parallels with a /100 print run. The base parallels are called "Credits", and the Best Of "meta-parallels", for lack of a better word, are called "Spotlight". They don't look any different than regular Best Of cards other than that Spotlight lettering at the top.

With those parallel names, I think they're going for some kind of movie theme, but there's not much else about the set that indicates it. Seeing 074/100 in red foil on the back is certainly cool, though.

Like 1998 Finest, I've found enough of these over the years to have something to compare incoming cards to and see where the differences lie. Checking Beckett is a good first step, but if you don't have a few on hand already to compare and contrast, it might not be much help.

2016 Topps Limited #93 Charlie Blackmon /1000

Jumping way ahead to the current Rockies era, Charlie Blackmon allows me to show the 2016 design again, something some bloggers won't mind and others will quite dislike. What makes this special, obviously, is the "Limited Edition" gold lettering on the right side of the card, plus a much thicker card stock than usual. This is something I had no idea existed, and I told Jared as much in my thank-you email.

This is from a premium factory set which Topps printed less than 1,000 of. It even came in a fancy silver box. Full sets on eBay are going for just under $100, which honestly seems like a bit of a deal with that small of a print run. And since I have just this one Blackmon, I know there is one fewer complete set out there.

I'm not sure where my seats are tonight, but if they're along the first base line, I'll get a good view of Charlie, who is covering right this year following the departure of Carlos González.

2014 Bowman Draft Top Prospects #TP-74 Trevor Story

Elsewhere on the playing field is shortstop Trevor Story, who accepted his Silver Slugger award before yesterday's game, along with teammates Nolan Arenado and Germán Márquez. Of those three, only Story has yet to ink a long-term deal with the Rockies. It's hard to believe that it's been three years since Story was tearing up the league as a rookie, mashing seven homers in his first six big-league games. Once upon a time, his cards weren't found outside Bowman, and the power-hitting righty had to make do with a batting helmet with ear flaps on both sides.

2007 Topps Heritage #263 Troy Tulowitzki (RC)

Story has certainly grown into the shortstop role, filling the shoes of Troy Tulowitzki. Back when this card was printed, Topps said, "The Rockies are keyed up about Troy's potential at shortstop." He became a fan favorite in Denver, but had injury problems and was eventually traded to Toronto. The Yankees took a chance on him, and he showed promise in spring training, but he only played in five games before straining his calf and landing on the Injured List. FYI, it's not called the "Disabled List" anymore.

I've always liked Tulowitzki, but he's got to be wondering how much longer he can keep this up. He's an elite athlete, and it must be extremely frustrating for him not to be able to practice his craft the way he'd like. Even though he was the third-youngest player in Rockies history according to this 1958-themed Topps Heritage rookie card, he's starting to get up there in years. He's seven months younger than I am, and I'm learning that the body just doesn't bounce back the way it once did.

It's not impossible that we'll see him back in purple pinstripes someday. The Rockies do like to sign past players once a few years pass. Mark Reynolds is back, Matt Holliday stopped by last year, Chris Iannetta is regularly starting behind the plate, and Jorge de la Rosa just inked a minor-league deal.

2013 Topps Chrome Chrome Connections Die Cuts #CC-TT Troy Tulowitzki

Long after his Rookie Card days, Tulo was established enough to warrant inclusion in small die-cut insert sets for brands like Topps Chrome. This completes my team set of 2013 Topps Chrome Connections, after CarGo's card that I received via trade from Alex long ago. I've seen the González die-cut a bunch of times (I even have two in the duplicates box if you want one), but Tulo's seems to be a bit more scarce, yet just as angular.

When he's healthy, Tulowitzki is quite consistent. By the time this set came out, he had already had three seasons in which he hit .290 with 25 home runs and 90 RBIs. Topps tantalized us on the card back with the possibility of a fourth, which would tie him with Vinny Castilla in the Rockies encyclopedia. In 2013, sharing the left side of the diamond with rookie Nolan Arenado, he hit .312 and exactly matched that count of 25 homers, but fell eight short in the RBI column. 2016 was a decent year, but he hasn't been able to eclipse his 2013 numbers yet.

1997 Donruss Gold Press Proofs #264 Neifi Perez /500

We'll wrap up with another die-cut, this one from 1997 Donruss. Rather than a multitude of corners and edges as in Chrome Connections, Donruss' die cut pattern is just a couple of right trapezoids, allowing for much easier handling and storage. As noted in a few places on this card, it's a Press Proof parallel, which had a print run of 2,000 in prior years. Those are still out there, and were called Silver Press Proofs in 1997. I don't have any in my collection, but there doesn't appear to be a die-cut involved. This shiny one is a new-for-1997 variety, the Gold Press Proof, which includes the aforementioned die cut and a print run of just 500.

As far as Rockies shortstop prospects, Neifi Pérez blazed the way for guys like Tulo and Story. The card back called him "Colorado's addition to the list of top shortstop prospects who have reached the majors the past couple of seasons." Implicitly included in that list would be Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Nomar Garciaparra.

Also on the card back is a lesson in Postseason roster rules. We're told that the Rockies called up Pérez in time for him to be on the team's Postseason roster. That requires a player to be on the 25-man roster by August 31st. September call-ups are not eligible, but that's less important this season, as the expansion of September rosters has been greatly limited.

Fortunately for Pérez, his debut was on August 31st, 1996. Unfortunately for Pérez, the Rockies didn't make the Postseason in 1996, so it was a moot point.

Normally, a card like this would be a good candidate to find the specific date of the photo, but there's barely any clear information on the out-of-town scoreboard to go on, and worse, it's not clear who the cameo is diving back to second base. He's wearing uniform #29, but I really can't tell which team this is. The colors point to a couple possible American League candidates, most likely the White Sox or maybe the Yankees, but as this photo is from 1996 (confirmed by the "MDM" patch on Neifi's right sleeve), interleague play had not yet started.

My best guess, but not with a high level of confidence, is that the cameo is a very young Bobby Abreu, then on the Houston Astros. The uniform number matches, the colors are maybe, possibly, consistent with the dark blue and gold the Astros wore in the mid-'90s, and Pérez did pinch-run and finish the game defensively against Houston on September 15, 1996. The Rockies issued two walks in the top of the 8th, forcing Abreu to second base. Shortly after that, the next batter lined out to the pitcher, and this play does have the look of the defense trying to double up the runner.

Jared included a couple other cards as well, which were already in the collection. There was an even more purple Helton card from 2004 SP Prospects, and a Leaf Steel card of Larry Walker, which is a slight upgrade since the metal in that set is surprisingly fragile.

Thanks for the cards, Jared!

Rockin' Retro Group Break the First (Part 1: Rockies)

Seeing as how Nachos Grande shipped my haul from his current group break today, it's probably a good idea for me to look at the retro cards he sent last time. I haven't blogged since the World Series ended, and then some, so I haven't offered my congratulations to the Red Sox for winning their fourth championship of the millennium, nor have I expressed condolences for the loss of Willie McCovey. May he and Stan Lee rest in peace.

Will I ever be caught up again? Time will tell. In the meantime, prepare to start seeing a lot of Topps Gold Label in these parts.

2017 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #15 David Dahl (RC)

David Dahl, who wisely scheduled his recent wedding for after the postseason (just in case), gives us our first look at the recently resurrected Topps Gold Label. After the success of Stadium Club's rebirth, Topps decided to dig into the archives for more ideas. Unfortunately, they brought the idea of a fractured set along with the name. I've never been thrilled with the concept, but at least there is some actual structure to all the variants, as opposed to the purely random variant chaos they've been giving us in flagship for a long time.

In a nod to the early Gold Label sets, the baseball fundamental depicted in the primary photo helps you identify which of three "classes" the card is in. A photo of a position player fielding indicates you're holding a Class 1 card. There's also an unbelievably faint vertical banner (almost like a security strip) on the left side of the card. Even under a magnifying glass, the light has to be just perfect to even glimpse it.

2017 Topps Gold Label Class 2 #15 David Dahl (RC)

Class 2 for a position player is a batting photo, which is slightly redundant, since the secondary picture already shows Dahl at the plate. Fortunately, the security strip is a touch easier to read, especially in the spot where it overlaps Dahl's uniform. The back is identical in both classes, and it mentions the record-tying 17-game hitting streak that he opened his career with. Dahl has a Gypsy Queen Allen & Ginter card that alludes to this as well, but Gold Label tells us that he shares this record with a Cincinnati Red named Chuck Aleno, who set the mark back in 1941.

1941 was a good year for hitting streaks.

2017 Topps Gold Label Class 3 #3 Trevor Story

I don't have a clue on the relative scarcity between the three classes, but I managed to obtain an example from each of them. Trevor Story on the basepaths signifies Class 3, confirmed by an even more visible security stripe. Story's been around for a while, so he doesn't get that nifty gold foil RC logo that David Dahl has, but there's still plenty of gold to go around, including the Topps logo in the upper right, which uses a logo I've never seen before. Seeing a capital "T" like that is just strange.

Story is a great all-around player, though he does strike out at an alarming rate. Still, he's excellent at the plate, and he now has a Silver Slugger award for his efforts, joining fellow Rockies Nolan Arenado and German Marquez in that award class.

1998 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #77 Dante Bichette

Brand-new sets of Gold Label aren't exactly "retro", but the inaugural 1998 set is. True to form, Dante Bichette's fielding pose identifies this as a Class 1 card, even though it's unlabeled. There's much more of a relief on this original set, especially the stamped logo, which contains the proper Topps font. It's delightfully thick and solid, and appears to be acetate, though it isn't transparent anywhere. The only slight gripe I have is that Bichette is wearing home and away jerseys on his two photos, but I'm splitting hairs. It's awesome that Nachos Grande found unopened boxes of these retro sets.

2016 Donruss Optic #9 Carlos Gonzalez DK

Shiny, too! Did I say shiny? It comes in the form of Donruss Optic, the quasi-Chrome set, and this time it's the normal white border, unlike the purple-bordered variety I once received from Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary, which I had slightly mislabeled until two minutes ago. Same painted look, same shiny finish, same unreadable kerning on the card back.

Seeing this in the normal white border makes me appreciate the colored borders even more. Purple is such a bold color, unique in baseball, that the base card almost seems like a different set. It looks more metallic, somehow more serious and weighty than with a fun purple border. I don't dislike it; it just has this visual sense that it could have been carved from an ingot of silver.

1998 Bowman Chrome #53 Neifi Perez

1998 Bowman Chrome is an under-represented set in my collection, which will become a theme throughout this post. Before this, I only had six cards from the set. I can at least fill one side of a page now, and Perez will be up toward the top. Under the right light, the Chrome finish makes Perez' uniform lettering, Jackie Robinson patch, batting glove, and shoes really pop. I don't recall most Chrome cards looking like that. Usually the player's outline is more prominent, but it's a really eye-catching look, almost like there are little jewels in the card.

Design-wise, it's a Bowman set that I can vaguely place within a 5-year window, but it looks very similar to 1999 Bowman. As with many years, the accent colors maintain the red/blue distinction between veterans and rookies. Todd Helton's card this year was a blue card; that's how retro we're talking here. And the card back is typical of Bowman, with a single year of stats and a scouting report. We're told about Perez' performance on June 26th, 1997, a win over the Giants in which he "participated" in five double plays. Knowing Perez' tendencies, I checked the box score to ensure he didn't "participate" by grounding into one. Luckily, his team had the ball (as the defense, weird, I know) during each of those five.

I wasn't really collecting in 1997. In fact, '97 was one of just two seasons in which I didn't go to a game at all. The other was 2000, which happened to coincide with the rise of a now-defunct online instant messaging program.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #131 Larry Walker

2002 Triple Crown, the next retro set, is quite unfamiliar. Before this break, which massively expanded my hoard of this set, I had one single, lonely card in the bottom portion of a 2002 Fleer page. Too bad, because it's really a nice set, probably my favorite so far in this break. The three silver bars on both top and bottom look vaguely like something Pacific would have done. I don't think they ever did the whole selective glossy thing, where the player is glossy but the background is matte. It's nice to touch, one of those sets I can't resist touching perhaps a bit more than I should. Any lenticular card is like that in the extreme, of course, and my collection of 1994 Sportflics was a little mistreated by my 10-year old self and my fingernails.

Fleer didn't seem to make the trek to Denver in 2001 to snap their photos, since almost all the Rockies in this set are in their away uniforms. Confusingly, that involved pinstripes at the time, but Larry Walker is clearly sliding into third in front of a Cardinal (?) who is definitely considered to be part of the background.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #107 Ben Petrick

Same goes for the tall Giants player behind Ben Petrick, who is flinging away his glossy catcher's mask. The cause of that is a bit unclear. It's likely a foul, but it could have been an extremely wild pitch that took an odd bounce or three. I don't recognize the Giant on this card, nor can I find anything out about the blue ribbon on his jersey. All I know for sure is that it's in SBC Park, a place where many Rockies were photographed for Fleer's multitude of 2002 sets.

The back of Petrick's card mentions another catcher whose name I haven't heard in years, Jason Kendall. Apparently, Jason's father, Fred, an ex-MLBer himself, served as a coach on the Rockies at the time.

2002 Fleer Triple Crown #251 Todd Helton PS

Fleer Triple Crown (not to be confused with the longer-lived Donruss Triple Play), included a few subsets at the end of the checklist. Pace Setters was one of them, and in addition to a little extra silver foil, the card took the opportunity to recount Helton's already stellar statistics both at the plate and in the field. Helton earned three Gold Gloves in his career, and if the Platinum Glove had existed at that time, he might have been in the running for that, too. Helton had numerous years under his belt by the time Yadier Molina reached the Bigs, and that's who has been winning most of the NL Platinum Gloves since its debut in 2011.

Nolan got it this year, though.

If Coors is such a hitter's park, then standout defenders playing there had better be getting that kind of recognition.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #97 Al Barlick

Things got a little weird after '02 Triple Crown. I'm fairly certain that I have an umpire or two in my Conlon Collection cards, but they're extremely rare. Topps has even gone so far as to edit umpires entirely out of photographs. But just look at Al Barlick's "You're Out!" call. If I were the batter, I would do everything humanly possible to make sure I got on base. Maybe even lean into a four-seam fastball.

He had a 27-season career as an ump, taking off a few years to serve in the Coast Guard during WWII. He earned "the utmost respect" from players, and he looks a bit more docile, if stern, on the card back. He became a member of Cooperstown in 1989, and since he's not wearing an official team logo, his forehead isn't oddly cropped out like many cards in the Panini Cooperstown set.

Barlick is one of just ten umpires in the Hall of Fame, and I doubt we'll be seeing anyone new enter the Hall anytime soon. Jim Joyce perhaps, but if Joe West makes it into the Hall before a Rockie does, I'm going to continue my fandom under protest.

1997 Sports Illustrated #27 Jamey Wright

Our final set is 1997 Sports Illustrated, a co-branded set released by Fleer. It's another set I only had a single card from, so this is mostly new to me. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but a grainy, sepia-toned headshot was probably not it. It's part of the Fresh Faces subset, documenting the early years of journeyman pitcher Jamey Wright's career. His longest tenure was with the Rockies, but after that, he spent time on nine other teams. Despite that, his only postseason appearance came in 2013 with the Rays as his career was drawing to a close.

Young Rockies pitchers held a lot more promise in 1997 than in later years, although that reputation is finally changing. But case in point, Fleer basically tells us on the back of this card that Roger Bailey, whose career would be over after 1997, had better stuff that Wright.

1997 Sports Illustrated #109 Vinny Castilla

Position players have always had an easier time at Coors Field than pitchers, and Castilla is so nonchalant that he's comfortable blowing a bubble as he jogs after a popup, batting gloves casually flopping out of his back pocket.

This is a player at ease.

The full-bleed photography found in this set is appealing, which is to be expected. Unfortunately, Sports Illustrated no longer has any photographers on their full-time payroll. I'm sure it saves money, but it erodes their brand if anyone else can pay to license the same photograph. That 1991 Topps set we all love so much had SI to thank for a lot of those images. And in a world where Topps has exclusivity, sports photographers don't have it easy.

1997 Sports Illustrated Great Shots #13 V.Castilla/A.Galarraga

The final bit of strangeness comes with this 5x7 folding photograph of who we're told is Andres Galarraga and Vinny Castilla. It's a 1997 set, but the player on the left really does not look like Vinny to me. He might be quite a bit younger, but I'm not 100% sure on identity here. And we can't see much of Galarraga's face at all, as he's clearly attending to something in his eye.

It's an odd picture on an odd card. The back is blank, and there's no card number, but the cropping works well to fit the fold of the paper. Each player is definitely on his own side.

This is a really great selection for a group break. It's nice to get the latest and greatest cards since it saves me a trip to Target, but to unearth these old gems really makes things different and reminds us how things have changed.

When I started today, Jason Kendall was not a a name I thought I'd hear.

That about wraps up the Rockies (and umpires, because there are no Rockies in the Hall yet). Part 2 will feature the Athletics.

The Trading Post #93: Night Owl Cards

March is usually the snowiest month in Colorado. But in the Denver area, we've barely seen a flake fly in weeks. It's definitely odd, seeing what the climate's been doing these days, and if we're getting summer-like weather at the end of winter, it makes me wonder what actual summer will be like.

2016 Topps Wal-Mart Holiday Snowflake #HMW152 DJ LeMahieu

Pretty much the only snowflakes I've seen recently came on this Holiday Snowflake card, a Wal-Mart exclusive set. Everyone was writing about these a few months ago, but as I haven't set foot in a Wal-Mart in years, I didn't pick any of these up. I also missed out on the Marketside insert cards that came in those frozen pizza boxes. But thanks to Night Owl Cards, this particular Wal-Mart exclusive found its way into my collection.

Unlike many others, I didn't really mind the smoke effect that Topps gave to their base cards in 2016. Seeing snowflakes there instead doesn't make this any better for me, just different. And definitely more festive. This is more like a Topps base card than 2016 Opening Day, as the Topps logo is in foil. But that's the same Jake Lamb in a throwback Diamondbacks jersey, trying to break up a double play being turned by a 2016 NL award winner.

2017 Topps #335 Jeff Hoffman (RC)

This is the third time that Night Owl has sent me cards, and judging by this 2017 Topps card, he couldn't get these Rockies extras to me fast enough. He's no fan of any other NL West team than the Dodgers, particularly not the Giants, but I'm fine with being his designated destination for Rockies cards.

I wrote about Jeff Hoffman earlier this month, but he still doesn't have a lock on a rotation spot as we near Opening Day. But even for the short time he's had in the majors, he did get a chance to get a great Coors Field card in 2017 Topps, probably with a blurry DJ LeMahieu in the background. I've only purchased one retail pack of the product so far, but sometimes these new sets show up in trades pretty quickly. And it's starting to seem familiar already.

2017 Topps #81 DJ LeMahieu LL

It doesn't get the same purple pinstripe color-coding on the front, but Topps has made a giant leap forward by color-coding the back of this League Leaders card the same color as the rest of the Rockies cards. I think that's the proper treatment for an award winner. Perhaps even better is that DJ gets the whole card front to himself, not needing to share it with runners-up or another league as in past years. And as Night Owl himself observed earlier this week, that can make for some odd combinations.

DJ and Daniel Murphy were neck-and-neck for the NL batting title as the 2016 season drew to a close, but the Rockies middle infielder edged out his fellow second baseman by a single point, hitting .348. I even snagged him for my 2017 Fantasy Baseball team in Monday night's draft. I'm certainly hoping for another strong performance.

2013 Topps Chrome #71 Ryan Wheeler (RC)

Ryan Wheeler had a card in 2013 Topps.

Various versions of it tend to pepper incoming trade packages, even this shiny and minimally curled one from Chome. But I've never featured it on the blog before. He played in a handful of games for the Diamondbacks and Rockies over three seasons, but never really made much of a splash. Pun not intended related to the Sea Turtle design.

2013 Topps was the year of the "Chase". If you flip this card over, you get a look at Wheeler's valiant attempt to eclipse Tris Speaker's all-time doubles record of 792. At the time, Wheeler had six. As of his most recent MLB appearance in 2014, he chipped away at that a little, leaving just 782 to go. I particularly like Topps highlighting that 792 number, a number that should be familiar to anyone who collected an overproduction-era Topps set.

2016 Topps Archives 65th Anniversary #A65-AG Andres Galarraga

I bought a small amount of 2016 Archives at Target last year, and I initially thought this Andres Galarraga card was an insert card from it. But it turns out that there was another Wal-Mart exclusive last holiday season, the 65th Anniversary variety. It's more or less like Topps Archives, but contains 65 lettered base cards, one for each of the past 65 flagship designs. Andres Galarraga's 1997 card was chosen as the reprint for that year, and I think it looks a heck of a lot better and easier to read without gold foil.

All the backs from this obscure reprint set, one that I largely missed amidst the contemporaneous flurry of Topps snowflake cards (pun definitely intended on that one), are done up in the style of 1975 Topps. I imagine that's why Night Owl made a purchase of this set to begin with, as his love of the '75s is well-known across the Cardsphere. That card back calls out Galarraga for being a five-time All-Star, and for two each Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards, but they neglected to mention his batting title in 1993. Not only did his mark of .370 put the Rockies on the map in their inaugural year, but he did that at the height of Tony Gwynn's career. That's basically like being a leading goal scorer during Wayne Gretzky's heyday.

1997 Select #127 Neifi Perez R

1997 Select isn't something I run across very often. But red foil is always welcome, a relative rarity that appeared on occasion in the late 1990s. The silver area has an interesting herringbone-like pattern with a slight texture. He was never my favorite Rockie, and a Google search turned up his name on a list of most-hated Royals, and for being the first player disciplined under MLB's banned stimulant policy. Then again, he did turn an unassisted triple play in the minors, a tidbit I learned from Night Owl's previous mailing. Quite a legacy.

Pinnacle, on the other hand, missed a giant opportunity by not making this a horizontal card. Or at least by chopping off the action that is obviously occurring at second base to make room for the herringbone foil. Try as I might, I don't think I'd ever be able to determine who got a cameo appearance on this rookie subset card. But it does hit the Coors Field mini collection nicely.

1996 Fleer Ultra Rising Stars #2 Marty Cordova

Everyone knows Night Owl loves his night cards. Fortunately, it seems he had one to spare. This surprisingly thick Fleer Ultra insert card is of 1995 AL Rookie of the Year Marty Cordova. Now, I like the Minnesota Twins as much as the next guy (as long as that guy isn't Brian), but I wasn't sure why this one was included. Perhaps Night Owl is just spreading the gospel of night cards across the Cardsphere. But upon closer examination, Night Owl's eagle eyes (pun intended, again), spotted a special place at the bottom of this card. Below the backdrop of celestial pinpoints is a young Coors Field as viewed from the center field Rockpile. It's looking toward Downtown Denver's skyline, one that has undergone quite a bit of change in recent years.

This is definitely an insert set I'll be chasing. I already had three cards from this set in my collection, and surprisingly, or rather alarmingly, somehow I never noticed that Coors Field was a key design element. It took a fan of an NL West rival to bring that to my attention.

1996 Sportflix Hit Parade #11 Dante Bichette

And as long as we're on the topic of American Leaguers, we'll wrap up with another 1996 insert card, this one from Pinnacle's 3-D Sportflix brand. Dante Bichette is the primary subject of this card, but there's a lenticular animation of an unidentified Seattle Mariner crushing a ball out toward left-center. The umpire and catcher both appear to stand up to watch the ball sail away, but the catcher seems to be looking in the wrong direction as the ball leaves the bat, and his view is obscured by the Sportflix logo anyway.

Perhaps the technology wasn't quite there yet, but an animated reproduction of one of Bichette's many home runs, such as his memorable 1995 Opening Day game-winner, would have really made this card incredible. With the pace of technological change, it's entirely possible that we'll start seeing highlight reels embedded in cards before too long. There's no reason the Topps Bunt app couldn't do that right now, but in the physical world, a little screen of some kind with a power source on a printed circuit board would make a set unlike any the Hobby has ever seen.

Topps already has us paying a couple hundred bucks a pop for the likes of Museum Collection and Tribute. How much more could it be to get a box with little computerized baseball cards?