Mom Goes to the Card Show

While I was busy digging through the vintage bin, my mom, who accompanied me to this particular card show earlier this year, surreptitiously took a stab at selecting a few singles for me. I know she reads my blog, and by now she surely has a pretty good idea of what would fit in my collection. The surprise stack of cards that were wrapped for my birthday alongside the vintage beauties I picked out really hit the mark. Just see for yourself.

2002 Topps All-World Team #AW-5 Larry Walker

Larry Walker is one of the best to ever wear a Rockies uniform, thanks to his MVP and near-Triple Crown season in 1997, a slew of batting titles, and even a few Gold Gloves. This card, however, highlights that performance not as a Rockie, but as a Canadian. Topps' All-World Team insert set from 2002 contains 25 players from all around the globe. The USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, Venezuela, Panama, and plenty more. Larry Walker holds the career record among Canadians for Home Runs, RBIs, and more, but fellow Canuck Joey Votto is making his mark and keeps getting mentioned as the best player not named Mike Trout.

In case you were wondering, yes, this surprisingly thick card mentions hockey. It also has lots of gold foil all over the front, about what you'd expect for an early-millennium insert card. Topps used an all-caps font on the back that is slightly difficult to read, but the world maps found in the background and in the globe are rather interesting. The globe primarily shows the Indian Ocean, flanked by Africa and the Arabian Peninsula on the left...er, West side of the card, and bits of Australia and Southeast Asia to the East. The background shows quite a bit more, and you can tell they're using the projection that makes Greenland and the Arctic areas of Canada look about as big as Africa.

2014 Topps Museum Collection Momentous Material Jumbo Relics #MMJR-CA Chris Archer /50 (MEM)

Following that, we have the Mercator projection example of a relic card. I promise I won't get further into cartography here, but this this is huge. Frankly, I'd expect nothing less from Topps Museum Collection. This giant swatch steals the show, but hiding off to the right is a serial number, #10 of just 50 printed. This is probably the first relic card I have of a Ray, and it makes sense that it would be Chris Archer. I've been running into him a lot this year.

There's an $8 price tag on the back of this one, but it probably came out of one of the discount relic boxes that most dealers put out on their table. 2 for $5 or something like that.

2002 Fleer Premium On Base! Game Used #11 Todd Helton /100 (MEM)

In fact, it was probably purchased with this Todd Helton relic, the easiest player to find at any Denver-area card show. The serial number is much less noticeable on this one, as it appears on the back in black, blending in with the rest of the printing.

Fleer was putting out some very boring white sets in their later years, but they jazzed up this Fleer Premium card by adding a piece of a base, a first in my collection. The vast majority of my relic collection is made up of uniform swatches, with a handful of wooden bat slivers and the occasional baseball leather. But to have a piece of an actual base is certainly unique, and Fleer even states that this is from an official game at Coors Field. You might think it was smoother, like the back of a golf glove, but it's actually more like the soft rubber grip on a kitchen utensil.

Amazingly, in all that white space, Fleer somehow forgot to add a card number. Beckett says it's number 11 in the 30-card memorabilia set, so we'll go with that. The aforementioned serial number is out of 100 copies, but even the base version of this is limited. In keeping with the "On Base!" theme, the insert cards without relics were given a print run equal to the player's 2001 on-base percentage. At least in the base set, the higher the card number, the higher the print run. Helton is on the upper end of that with 432 base card copies, topping out at 515 with none other than on-base machine Barry Bonds.

2013 Bowman Platinum Prospect Autographs Green Refractors #BPAP-WS Will Swanner /399 (AU)

Maybe my mom has a preference for negative space in the cards she picks out. Bowman Platinum left plenty of space for then-prospect Will Swanner to sign in blue Sharpie without even covering up the /399 serial number. It's not quite as empty as a specific Jeff Francis card in my collection, but the autograph is clearly the star of the show here, even with that green background behind the photo.

As we all know, Bowman is a prospecting set. But for every Stephen Strasburg, you have a flotilla of players that never get the big call-up, even during September when rosters expand. Swanner was billed as a power-hitting catcher, but he topped out at the Double-A level. He hit 17 homers in 2015 for the New Britain Rock Cats, and progressed up to Triple-A Albuquerque in 2016. There, in just ten games, he managed one homer on a .194 batting average, was sent back down the farm system, and was released in June of 2016. That's the last line on his stats page, so it looks like his baseball career is over. The Rockies are pretty well set on catchers these days anyway, having just traded for Jonathan Lucroy, and with young guys like Tom Murphy and Tony Wolters looking promising.

2013 Topps Update Franchise Forerunners #FF-9 Rickey Henderson / Yoenis Cespedes

Mom must know I like green cards. This one makes me wonder why I don't collect more Oakland A's cards, so I'll have to give that some thought. But she picked an insert card from 2013 Topps Update's Franchise Forerunners set, one of the few that year that didn't hit us over the head with the "Chase" theme. All ten cards are combo cards, with this one showing the all-time stolen base leader Rickey Henderson taking a lead, pictured below the now-Met Yoenis Cespedes.

If he's now a Met, you might be thinking that means he's had some injury problems this season. And you'd be correct. Cespedes recently injured his (other) hamstring, the same injury that kept him out for the first couple months of 2017. And as I write this, I'm reading the ticker on MLB Network all about Michael Conforto, who injured his shoulder on a swing (yes, really) late last month. Both Conforto and Cespedes will miss the rest of the Mets season.

2013 Select Skills #SK39 Ozzie Smith

Just because you can't use logos doesn't mean you can't make a card shiny. Select was relaunched for a one-year run in 2013, making us all remember the mid-range set that Pinnacle put out year after year in the 1990s. I don't remember it ever being quite this shiny, but I'll take it. The "Skills" word at the top indicates this is another insert card, which is from a rather huge 45-card set. We get a zoomed-in version of the same photo on the back, along with a well-written paragraph describing Smith's unmistakable flair in the field, and that he "always recorded outs in style."

Even without calling him The Wizard or mentioning his signature backflip, Panini put out a great card of Ozzie Smith.

1994 Flair #36 Frank Thomas

Finally, the only main set card in this stack is also the oldest. Frank Thomas was a cardboard god in 1994, strike or no. And his card from a premium brand like Flair probably could have paid for lunch. The stats on the back are a little hard to read since they're superimposed over another full-bleed photo of Thomas in his pinstripes, but it's clear enough to spot his 41 home runs in 1993, along with an average that was well over .300 for each year thus far in the big leagues. He had a few down years, but his lifetime average just squeaked over the line at .301. Fleer doesn't list it as the batting average but rather the percentage, abbreviated "Pct." We can all assume that's the batting average, as there's nothing like an on-base percentage, slugging percentage, or fielding percentage included, let alone a modern Sabermetrics stat like OPS or BABIP.

Obviously, Thomas's initial is given the royal treatment, framed in a gold banner like medieval heraldry. Hard to miss that. In my early collecting days, I found more 1993 Flair than 1994, but the overall theme is more or less the same. 1994 gave us more gold foil and a bit less soft focus. This might be found in the discount bin today, but it still has a little essence left of the prestige it carried during the tail end of the baseball card boom.

This was an awesome surprise to receive as a gift earlier in the year, and I think any non-collector would be hard-pressed to do a better job at picking seven assorted cards for someone else's collection. Well done, Mom, and thanks.

BUNTing into the shift

It was a successful shopping trip to Target when I checked the shelves a second time for Topps Bunt 2017. This purchase was actually made prior to my blaster of 2017 Stadium Club, a set I chose to feature first, partially to keep my content more relevant, and partially because it pretty much blows any other Topps product out of the water.

2017 Topps Bunt #51 Chris Archer

Regardless of whether I buy Stadium Club or Bunt, I've been pulling plenty of Chris Archer cards this year. Archer, a strikeout master who earned his second All-Star selection this year, is still hovering around a .500 win percentage, about the same as when I last wrote about him.

I've been much less active in the Topps Bunt mobile app than in past years, but I still log in from time to time. I even got a 5-card pack of National Baseball Card Day virtual cards, which share the same design with the cards that were handed out at card shops across the country yesterday. But as they did last year, the Bunt base cards inside the app vary a little bit from this printed product.

2017 Topps Bunt #96 Marcus Stroman

Marcus Stroman, one of my fantasy team members this year, took a no-hitter into the 7th inning during the World Baseball Classic final this spring, where he teamed up with Chris Archer to bring the title home for Team USA. This card says he has a "sunny future", and based on this day-game image, the photo selection for this card ties right in. Even that double stripe in the background seems to evoke some sun rays, shining down on Toronto's ace.

I don't know if we're giving names to non-flagship Topps sets these days, but I'm offering up "the racing stripes set" for 2017 Bunt, which looks just like what you'll find on the fender of a Corvette Grand Sport.

Yes, I'm a car guy, in case you couldn't tell from that and yesterday's Jaguar reference.

2017 Topps Bunt #41 Jason Heyward

Jason Heyward, or J-Hey, as he'll be known on his Player's Weekend jersey, is decked out in Cubbie Blue at the plate. This color-coded set matches his jersey very well, and we get a glimpse of the jaw extension on Heyward's batting helmet, which he started wearing after suffering a broken jaw in 2013. Giancarlo Stanton, Keon Broxton, and many others throughout the league have been opting to wear a bit of extra protection when coming to the plate, and rightly so.

I took a little league pitch off the elbow once, and it remains some of the worst pain I've ever experienced. Taking a Major League fastball off the face, or worse, a line drive back at your head, is easily the scariest moment that can occur in a ballgame. Helicoptering broken bats are dangerous, but you usually have lots of time to get out of the way. It's dangerous enough out there, with a slippery base nearly destroying Bryce Harper's knee last night, to a hit-by-pitch today that caused Nolan Arenado to immediately remove himself from the game for a hand x-ray. Baseball should do all it can to avoid potentially life-threatening head injuries.

2017 Topps Bunt #155 Noah Syndergaard

Noah Syndergaard, aka "Thor", perhaps overdid it a bit with his training and conditioning, by his own admission. He's been out for most of the season with a torn muscle, adding to the Mets' injury woes that have plagued them for much of the past couple seasons. Somehow, they're still in third place, despite having one of the best rotations in the league stuck on the disabled list. But there are still long, flowing, blond locks everywhere you turn, accented by the Topps BUNT Racing Stripes.

By the way, Mets, you can't have Jon Gray.

Game of Thrones spoilers to follow.

Despite his injury (well, likely long before it), Syndergaard still found time for a cameo appearance in last week's Game of Thrones episode. In a medieval world where baseball does not exist, I'd probably pick a fireballer like Thor to be my chief spear-thrower. All seemed to be going well in the battle until a dragon showed up and char-broiled everyone to ash. That's not an injury you're likely to recover from, and even if there are dangerous flying objects, I vote for living in a time where competition on an open field is done with bats and balls rather than swords and spears.

2017 Topps Bunt Blue #194 Mike Moustakas

I pulled a few of the Blue parallels in this value pack of Bunt, but this one of Mike Moustakas looked the best. The Royals have so much blue in their logo and uniform, you can hardly tell this is a monochrome card. It almost looks like a cyan printing plate. In this insert set, I also pulled now-Rockie Jonathan Lucroy, and Thor's long-haired rotation mate, Jacob deGrom. Moustakas was the pick, partially because I wanted to throw his awesome Instagram handle out there again, @MooseTacos8.

This third baseman has two All-Star selections and a World Series ring to his name, and he needs just a few more long balls to take the Royals' season record, which currently stands at a surprisingly low 36. Even the great George Brett never had more than 30 in a season. They are an expansion team, and the winner of the only World Series ever between two expansion teams, but they've played almost fifty seasons. You'd expect someone to at least have passed 40 by now.

2017 Topps Bunt #195 Jorge Alfaro (RC)

Blue, blue, blue, blue, and a blue parallel. That's a lot of blue, so I felt the need to throw in a random Phillie I've never heard of, just to break up the monotony. Alfaro, apparently a top prospect in the Phillies organization, joined the farm system as part of the Cole Hamels trade. He hails from Colombia, a somewhat rare origin for a Major Leaguer, compared to Venezuela, which borders it on the west. I'm not sure whether this is a posed shot, or perhaps from batting practice, but I find it surprising that Alfaro is just wearing a backwards cap here, as I'm pretty sure catchers are required to wear a helmet when behind the plate.

2017 Topps Bunt Infinite #I-KM Kenta Maeda

I got a nice variety of insert cards in this value pack, starting off with another mostly-blue card, this one of Dodgers starter Kenta Maeda, who hails from Japan. According to the card, Maeda idolized Ichiro as a boy, which Vin Scully had a bit to say about last year. In their first meeting, Maeda retired Ichiro three times, holding his idol hitless, which is all the more impressive when you remember that Ichiro has amassed thousands and thousands of hits in his career, helping pave the way for more guys like Maeda to even play in the MLB in the first place.

There's a faint photograph of Dodger Stadium layered over Maeda's bust, bringing to mind the card backs of 1992 Topps. I don't really know what makes this "Infinite", unlike the very obvious Power Zone insert card from this year's Stadium Club. But it's a nice enough card.

2017 Topps Bunt Perspectives #P-RK Ralph Kiner

I'm definitely not liking that this year's insert cards aren't getting numeric card numbers, as that pendulum seems to be swinging the wrong way again. But this yellow Pirates card gives us another color to look at, and the only horizontal card in the whole pack.

I hate to admit this, but I don't really know that much about this Hall-of-Famer. Thanks to this card, I now know that he was an avid golfer, and frequently played with celebrities like James Garner and Jack Lemmon. Thanks to my other research, I discovered that he was a Navy pilot in WW2, led the National League in home runs during several consecutive postwar years, and even hit 54 home runs in 1949, the highest mark seen in the National League between Hack Wilson and Mark McGwire.

Kiner had to retire at 32 due to a back injury, but not long after that, he began a long career as a broadcaster for the New York Mets. Other than his final season in 1955 as a Cleveland Indian, Kiner didn't have much to do with the American League during his long life. He passed away in 2014 at the age of 91. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975, making it in by the skin of his teeth, thanks to a single vote in his favor on his final ballot. He never missed an induction ceremony after that.

2017 Topps Bunt Programs #PR-OS Ozzie Smith

Unlike Kiner, this Hall-of-Famer isn't so far before my time. I saw him in person on August 26th, 1995, during my first-ever visit to Coors Field. Ozzie went 0-4 that day, but the Cardinals rallied in the 9th to scratch out a win at 20th and Blake. I don't remember if The Wizard dazzled us with one of his trademark backflips, but he was one of many players now in the Hall of Fame that I got to see as a boy. And a few more that should be.

Bunt Programs are pretty much the same as last year, giving us a close-up action shot on the front, and some cleverly worded story titles on the back, complete with fake page numbers. Ozzie gets gems like "Conjuring up 'The Wizard'", "Ace in the Hole," and from his 1985 NLCS walkoff highlight, "Go Crazy, Folks, Go Crazy."

I doubt that Topps has the editorial staff to actually build articles behind these tantalizing headlines, but I'd love a QR code or something where I can quickly find out what these features are referring to, especially for other colorful characters found in this insert set, like Goose Gossage, George Brett, Johnny Cueto, and Bartolo Colon.

This pack couldn't have cost me more than $3, and even if it's not quite as awesome as Stadium Club, I think Bunt has a real place in the market. I hope they keep it around, even if it's just so I can open current product at a low price point when the urge arises.

Moonshot

Unlicensed sets typically bore me. I know many of my fellow bloggers love the oddball cards, but a photo of George Brett wearing a plain blue hat and a generic white jersey with blue trim is terribly anticlimactic after pages upon pages of action shots.

So what to do when MLB pulls your baseball license, as they did with Upper Deck? You revive an old brand to compete with Allen & Ginter, of course.

Inevitably, this leads to obscure, overpainted photos...
 

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #180 Ozzie Smith SP

...like a very young Ozzie Smith trying to catch a wayward batting helmet...

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #113 Steve Carlton

...Steve Carlton making a call, likely not to the bullpen...

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #9 Nick Faldo

...and British golf legend Nick Faldo with a properly straight left arm.

But the real gems were the ones that appealed to my geeky side. For example, a card of fellow geek Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer.

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #8 Steve Wozniak

Look how excited he is about the idea of mobile computing!

But the best one from this blaster (part of my Dave & Adam's Card World shopping spree) has to be this one of moon-walker Alan Bean.

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #30 Alan Bean

Alan Bean was the Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) of Apollo 12, and the fourth man to walk on the moon. This is a detail from a group shot of the whole crew, and he's standing in front of a mockup of the LEM that he would pilot to land on another world.

When I first composed this post, I couldn't help but wonder if all twelve astronauts that have walked on the moon have been honored on a trading card. Besides this Bean and Buzz Aldrin, which I've shown on this blog before, the only other one that comes to mind is a card from another American Pie set - this one with a photo of Dave Scott, taken during Apollo 15.

A little Googling led me to this post of Fuji's, and it turns out that a whole set of Apollo-era astronauts was produced during the overproduction years. That set is the only one so far to immortalize some of our lesser-known Apollo astronauts like Charlie Duke and Gene Cernan on cardboard. I can assure you that I'd chase a 12-card insert set of those brave pioneers.

Now that China and India are firmly on the list of spacefaring nations, and American private industry is picking up where NASA left off, perhaps we'll start to see a resurgence of interest in the history and future of our space program.