The Trading Post #145: A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts

It's not often when the Rockies are in first place in mid-August.

Asterisk.

As the weekend series against Texas opens, one of my many pending stacks of incoming cards caught my eye. There are only two cards here, but the gold-foil-to-card ratio was about as high as it can possibly be for a single PWE. This one came from Jon at A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts, who just introduced me to the world of buybacks.

2011 Topps #230 Aaron Cook (2017 Rediscover Topps Gold)

Yes, after all these years of Topps doing buybacks and stamping cards, this is the very first one to enter my collection. Beckett doesn't list these at all, and there's nothing on the card other than the "Rediscover Topps" lettering to signify that this is anything but a normal 2011 Topps card. I don't even know the best way to caption it. And because there's no Beckett info on it, I had to turn to Google to figure out that this is from the 2017 series of buybacks. Apparently, that's the year when we were all encouraged to rediscover Topps.

I'm not sure exactly why we need to rediscover the 2011 design, of all years. Thanks to the stratospherically-priced Mike Trout rookie card (not to mention the rookie card of red-hot Charlie Blackmon) it's probably one of the best-known designs Topps has done in twenty years. And I certainly hope Topps didn't spoil any real Trout rookie with one of these stamps.

According to my research, there were five foil varieties to be found among 2017 buybacks, starting with the usual low-grade and most common bronze, ascending up the Olympic medal colors to this mid-range gold, and topping off with the rarest blue and red varieties. I'm not sure how well the silver would look when placed on a design that already uses a healthy dose of silver foil, but the gold does stand out quite nicely.

No word on whether there will be a meta buyback-of-buybacks at some distant point in the future. Who knows, it could eventually look like the annually-deposited layers of stickers that end up on the license plate of an old car.

As far as the underlying card itself, I like the 2011 design. It's clean, certainly far less busy than the recently-unveiled 2021 design. By the way, Jo Adell was the featured player on the 2021 design preview, and the guy had a rough week. In addition to giving the world its first glimpse of 2021 Topps, which was not all that well-received, he also committed a Canseco-style error that converted a fly ball into a home run.

Even though he's the career Rockies leader in innings pitched and several other categories, Aaron Cook is a rare bird around here. I can't help but notice that he wore #28, the number now worn by Nolan Arenado. In fact, I pointed this exact fact out once before when I saw an Aaron Cook card.

2000 Pacific Prism Holographic Gold #48 Pedro Astacio /480

Another pitcher toward the top of the Rockies career leaderboards is Pedro Astacio. He was the team's strikeout leader for a long time, and while two pitchers have since passed him on that statistic, he remains the team leader in complete games. Based on how important the bullpen has grown in today's game, he might never lose that record.

One other interesting statistical note. No other Rockie has hit more batters than Astacio, but he's nowhere to be found on the wild pitch leaderboard. Maybe it's an indication that hitters just crowded the plate against him, but the combination of those two statistics tell me that his control was right where he wanted it. Same goes for Jamey Wright, who's among the top-20 all-time of batters hit, and half that list consists of guys who played in the 19th century.

On to the card, which has to be one of the shiniest, most gold cards in my whole collection. The pattern glitters like a rainbow in a dozen different directions, and it looks great. I love cards like this, I really do. They're mesmerizing. So mesmerizing that I didn't even notice the serial number in the lower right until months after I opened this PWE. This Holographic Gold has a print run of 480, sort of a strange number. Strange, I thought, until I saw the print runs of some of the other color varieties of this card. 448, 916, 565, and even a couple prime numbers in 61 and 691.

The baseball card world lost such richness when Pacific went under.

And unlike the Topps buyback, in which I had no idea what year the stamp was from, Pacific leaves no doubt about their sets. This is 2000 Pacific Prism, card #48. It's right there on the card back, and we can thank Pacific for being among the first to add that collector-friendly feature.

It's rare for me to finish writing a post before first pitch. Granted, I don't usually do two-card posts, but I usually end up writing until at least the sixth or seventh inning. Scanning will take a little longer, but with just two cards, I don't have to worry much about whether my scanner will auto-crop each card on the first try or on the seventh.

Thanks, Jon, for these great gold cards and for giving me a glimpse at the strange world of Topps buybacks!

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

Nachos Grande is one of the greats when it comes to putting group breaks together. His first Rockin' Retro group break was quite a hit, and during the 2018 Postseason, he put together a second. There was some really good stuff in here, and seeing this huge variety of old brands is such a refreshing break from the monopolistic market we have today. There's even some Pacific. Topps was then, and remains my favorite brand, but a little variety is nice too.

Of course I picked the Rockies as my primary team, ending up with the New York Mets as my second, randomized team. That selection is unsurprising, but my first card from the box of 2001 Topps Gold Label surprised both myself and Nachos Grande.

2001 Topps Gold Label MLB Award Ceremony Relics #GLR-AG2 Andres Galarraga HR Bat (MEM)

How about that to kick things off? Usually I save the highlights for the end, but this warranted top billing. Andres Galarraga led the NL in home runs in 1996, and he was rewarded with this beautiful bat relic in 2001 Topps Gold Label. Their relic collection was labeled as MLB Award Ceremony, profiling various award-winning years of players' careers.

The Big Cat hit 47 that year, the first season at Coors Field which wasn't strike-shortened. The AL was really heating up that year, as five other players hit 47 or more dingers, led by Mark McGwire with 52. McGwire was included in this relic set, though it's unclear which of his many league leader stats Topps picked to feature. It's also surprising to remember that McGwire retired in 2001. Seems like quite a while ago.

The handwritten note from Nachos Grande that accompanied my cards said that this pull alone made the entire break worth it for him.

2001 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #47 Jeff Cirillo

Clearly, Nachos Grande likes Topps Gold Label. A more recent release of Topps Gold Label was included in the last group break, ensuring that you have lots of thick, shiny cards to show for your buy-in. They even have some raised lettering. Todd Helton and Larry Walker were included in this stack, as was lesser-known third baseman Jeff Cirillo, who is not on the Hall of Fame ballot this year.

Cirillo was a Rockie for two seasons in the early 2000s, being elected to his second of two All-Star appearances in 2000. Like the rest of the Gold Label base cards I received, this is a Class 1 card, the most common of the three in the fractured set. He played for a few more teams as his career drew to a close, and his only taste of Postseason baseball came in 2007 with the Diamondbacks. The Rockies clinched the NL pennant that year, meaning that Jeff Cirillo's final game was Game 4 of the 2007 NLCS, which took place at Coors Field.

2002 Topps Total Total Topps #TT48 Larry Walker

The 2019 Hall of Fame class is just days away from being announced, and it finally seems like Larry Walker is getting the recognition he earned in his 17-year career. 2002 Topps Total included him in this awkwardly-named 50-card Total Topps insert set, mentioning his 1997 MVP award and three batting titles in four years. The elongated red oval that was integral to the Topps Total logo is used heavily in this shiny insert set.

Larger insert sets tend to bug me slightly, but they make a lot of sense in Topps Total, which had 990 cards in the base set.

2002 Topps Total #238 Pete Harnisch

990 cards means you can include guys like Pete Harnisch, a free agent the Rockies signed for 2002, but who never played. That makes this a rare zero-year card, one on which Topps billed him as "a top member of the Rockies rotation when healthy". Unfortunately, that never came to pass.

He got a card in the 2002 Topps flagship set with the same photograph, but other than that and its associated parallels, this is the only evidence that the Rockies once planned to put Pete Harnisch on the hill. I remember him mainly as a member of the Astros, which is who he played for in 1993 at the height of the overproduction era. This is why I think of Charlie Hough as a Marlin, or Dave Winfield as a Twin. 1993 Topps was gospel and those synapses are strong.

2002 Topps Total #204 Terry Shumpert

Just the same, in my mind, Terry Shumpert was a Royal who played for the Rockies, even though he played in quite a few more games as a Rockie. Unlike Harnisch, Shumpert didn't get a card in 2002 Topps, proving the value of an all-encompassing set like Topps Total. It's what allows him to make his debut on Infield Fly Rule five years after its creation, as opposed to being lost to history. Whichever player's left side is on this card is also probably making his debut, too.

Speaking of that, there are numerous players whose names I know from 1993 Topps that never really had much of a career, especially in the Rockies and Marlins team sets. Surely this also goes for years in which I wasn't collecting, and I'm unlikely to ever hear of them just because of the changing nature of the hobby. A fleeting career from 1999-2000 is something I probably missed. Yet I just recalled the name of Travis Buckley off the top of my head, #732 in '93 Topps, a pitcher who never progressed past Triple-A.

At that age, and especially in pre-interleague days, if someone had a card, their name was worth remembering.

2002 Topps Total #700 Mike Hampton

A set including everyone naturally includes the bigger names as well, including a bunting Mike Hampton. Topps Total tells us on the back about his 1999 season with Houston, a 22-4 year which nearly earned him the NL Cy Young Award, finishing second to Randy Johnson. Yes, the Astros were still in the National League back then, and if not for their recent excellence, I'd still probably think of them that way.

Appropriately for this card, Hampton was no slouch at the plate. He walloped seven home runs in 2001, and before you comment with "pre-humidor Coors!", three of those were on the road.

1998 Paramount Copper #152 Ellis Burks

What's more of a liability for an unlicensed set? A lack of logos or a lack of team names? 1998 Pacific Paramount is technically unlicensed, including the fine print of "Pacific baseball player cards are not manufactured, sponsored, or authorized by any team or league." I checked a few other 1998 Pacific sets and some had this disclaimer, others didn't. Research shows that Pacific's license required them to print Spanish-language cards. This was their first English-only set, so by not fulfilling those terms of the license, they couldn't use team names. They didn't do any airbrushing, as the team logos are in full view. It's just like 2010 Upper Deck in that regard, however none of the 1999 Pacific cards I checked had any such licensing issue.

What a difference a decade or so makes. 1998 Pacific skirted the rules and got flexibility in their license a year later, but 2010 Upper Deck landed in legal hot water and remains absent from the baseball side of the hobby.

Anyway, Ellis Burks got a "Colorado" card in Pacific Paramount's inaugural '98 set, and thus all the colored parallels too. This pleasing shade of copper is a one-per-pack parallel, but the design is one of the least-readable foil designs I can recall seeing. Any printing issues and this would be completely illegible. This is not a set I would particularly enjoy sorting.

1998 Paramount #156 Jeff Reed

Catcher Jeff Reed has been showing up a lot around here lately, and by that I mean twice. The silver foil is the base design and somehow seems a touch more legible, maybe since my eye is so trained to see silver foil. It looks like Reed is in Wrigley Field, which must be where Pacific sent their photographers that year. Dante Bichette's card has part of a "WGN Sports" logo on the brick wall behind the plate.

1998 Paramount #151 Dante Bichette

WGN Sports was one of the great places to watch daytime baseball before MLB broadcasting rules got all screwy. The Braves were occasionally on TBS, but the Cubs played lots more day games.

1995 Score Summit #42 Andres Galarraga

Not every card of Andres Galarraga can be a relic, but it's one of just a few I received from 1995 Score Summit. It's surprisingly thick, and a rarely-seen set in these parts. The team logo scans even a little better than it looks in person, an eye-catching gold medallion on a white background.

The card back is unusual. It breaks down his monthly statistics into a grid, which is then overlaid on a baseball diamond. It's a bit hard to decipher, and is a bit depressing, because the months of August and September 1994 are conspicuous strike-impacted columns of zeroes. Of all the years to give out monthly stats, 1994 is a terrible pick. Galarraga experienced a season-ending injury in late July 1994, so his August looks even worse than other players in this set, but in effect, he only lost a couple weeks of playing time.

1995 Score Summit #42 Andres Galarraga (Reverse)

At least the photo on the back is a good one. It shows Galarraga in the dugout holding a "Catch the Fever" pennant, likely an item of fan memorabilia he was asked to sign. He also has those wraparound shades that everyone was sporting in the 1990s.

1995 Score Summit #149 Juan Acevedo (RC)

As was common with Score sets, the Rookies got a little bit of a different design. Check Juan Acevedo's card in 1995 Score Select to see what I mean. In Summit, the gold team logo shifted toward the left, which partially covers a rocky-looking silhouette at the bottom. It looks a little like a canyon wall but it could just be houses.

Both Beckett and much of the hobby seem to have a convention of dropping the main brand from sets like these. It's just listed as "Summit", even though Score's logo is clearly displayed. Same thing goes for Pacific "Paramount", and most famously, Fleer "Ultra". Even Topps "Finest" can't escape that fate, yet Topps Chrome seems to retain its full name. I tend to go back and forth, but I'm not above overriding an official Beckett listing from time to time. Like right now.

1991 Topps Archives 1953 #332 Eleanor Engle

Obviously, the Rockies were nowhere to be found in 1991 Topps Archives, one of Topps' earlier offerings to resurrect an old design, in this case, the 1953 set. Nachos Grande was nice enough to include one anyway, since the Mets are absent, too. It's somewhat rare as overproduction-era sets go. The final grouping of cards in the set are all part of a "The Cards that Never Were" subset, noted as such on the back, and can be differentiated by their strangely-colored backgrounds.

Quite a few huge names that didn't make it into the original '53 release are here, such as Hoyt Wilhelm, Richie Ashburn, Hank Aaron as a prospect, Ted Williams, and Don Newcombe. Also included toward the end of the checklist is Eleanor Engle, the first woman to sign a contract to play pro baseball. She signed with the Harrisburg Senators in June 1952. Unfortunately, that lasted about a day before the powers that be decided it was still 1952.

There are always little glimmers of gender integration in pro sports, such as Manon Rhéaume, who played in a couple exhibition games for the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning in the early '90s. But anything more still seems to be a long way off. Perhaps not coincidentally, Larry Doby, the second African-American player in the MLB, and first in the American League is directly after her in the checklist.

Sooz wrote about this card once, and noted Engle's own comments about this card, who said "I look like a skunk at a picnic." It's a shame, because it was reported that she could hit better than some of the guys out there. Time will tell; I just think it would be nice to see more women on the diamond than Jennie Finch once a year in the Celebrity Softball game after the Home Run Derby. Or even in the broadcast booth. Jenny Cavnar called a few games for the Rockies last season, and I was sure to voice my support before NLDS Game 3 back in October.

2016 Donruss #173 DJ LeMahieu

These are mostly older sets, so there are obviously no current players depicted. But even DJ LeMahieu in 2016 Donruss won't be back next year. The paragraph on the back tells us that "If LeMahieu had started the 2015 season any hotter he would have spontaneously combusted." Trevor Story did about the same a year later.

DJ became a Rockie thanks to one of the best trades the team has ever pulled off. He came over from the Cubbies with Tyler Colvin in exchange for prospect Casey Weathers, who did not make it past Double-A, and third baseman Ian Stewart. The New York Yankees see plenty of value in him, signing him to a two-year, $24 million deal. Add in Adam Ottavino, whom they just inked for three years at $27 million, and Troy Tulowitzki, and it looks like the Yankees are stockpiling lots of ex-Rockies talent.

I continue to hope that Nolan Arenado is not among them, because I'd really like to see him stick around. But I'd also like to see him win a World Series, and with top Rockies players heading elsewhere, that's looking less likely to happen in Denver.

1998 Fleer Tradition #443 Pedro Astacio

We still have a couple more sets to go, continuing with 1998 Fleer Tradition. After a couple years of matte finish, Fleer decided to go back to glossy. They also selected an, ah, interesting photo of Astacio leaning in to see a pitch. He's 6'2" but he looks like he'd be taller. Maybe it's just the angle.

Like DJ, Pedro Astacio became a Rockie via a trade, a late-season straight-up swap with the Dodgers for Eric Young. He spent five years as a Rockie, and still stands atop the leaderboard in a few categories, including complete games.

1998 Fleer Tradition #561 Dante Bichette

Dante Bichette was a big guy. He's listed as 6'3", 235 lbs. It became a bit of a running joke in Denver every February how much he had bulked up in the offseason. This article from 1998 says he put on 44 pounds by the time that year's Spring Training began. And since this is Series 2, we might be looking at a card from precisely that time. What really caught my eye, though, is that the bat looks just about ready to stand on end, something Martin Prado once managed to magically do.

1998 Fleer Tradition Vintage '63 #89 Darryl Kile

You might think this is an insert from 1998 Fleer, but it's actually a one-per-pack partial parallel set. The photos are the same as the full-bleed base cards, overlaid with the classic 1963 Fleer design. Unlike Topps, Fleer has far fewer iconic sets in the archives, so they return to this one a lot. In fact, the flagship 2003 Fleer Tradition set just reproduced it entirely, not even bothering to make it a parallel.

The Rockies put a lot of resources into their rotation in 1998, signing Darryl Kile in the offseason. Astacio fared better at elevation than did Kile, who led the Majors in losses his first year as a Rockie, with 17. The card back tells us that he won the NL Pitcher of the month in July 1997, but neglects to mention that was with the Astros. Fleer was serious about this being a parallel set; even the write-up is identical to his base card, which was also included.

1997 Donruss Limited #14 Matt Williams / Vinny Castilla C (Reverse)

This break was a monster. We're down to our final set, which is 1997 Donruss Limited. It's pretty, but it's a strange one. The cards are all two-sided, and there are short-printed subsets, but they're scattered all throughout the checklist instead of grouped.

Counterparts are the primary card type, featuring a star player on the front, and a not-quite-as-good player on the back, with a little statistic at the bottom. Vinny Castilla, whose 113 RBI in 1996 was second among NL third baseman, appears on the card back of a Counterparts card. Andres Galarraga, by the way, led all the Majors that year, with 150.

Castilla is considered the secondary player on this card, so who was the primary player?

1997 Donruss Limited #14 Matt Williams / Vinny Castilla C

It's Matt Williams, who had just become an Indian in a monster offseason trade. His side is much shinier than Castilla's, at least in person, and also color-coded differently. Williams, you'll recall, is the player whom Castilla replaced in the starting lineup of the 1995 All-Star Game.

1997 Donruss Limited #87 Larry Walker / Eric Young D

The Double Team subset consists of 40 cards, and while they're not serial numbered, these have been calculated to consist of 4,400 copies based on the total production run. We get to see Larry Walker on the shiny front side, and rather than an alternate team on the back, Double Team cards are shared with another teammate, in this case Eric Young. The reverse side has the non-shiny appearance, along with the usual card number and logos you'd expect to see on a card back. We're also told how long each player has been with that team at the bottom, instead of a stats-based tidbit.

1997 Donruss Limited #169 Larry Walker S /1100

Our final card of this marathon post is an even rarer subset called Star Factor, also 40 cards large. Again, there is no serial number, but this is one of just 1,100 copies. The same player, in this case Hall of Fame candidate Larry Walker, appears on both sides with more statistics at the bottom. This one happens to mention his six straight extra base hits, precisely the same series of hits documented on his 1998 Fleer Unforgettable Moments card.

So there you have it. Another 3,000-word post about an awesome group break run by Nachos Grande.

And that's just part one.

The Last Minute Group Break (Part 1: Rockies)

Way back in June, Chris of Nachos Grande, easily one of the most active and prolific bloggers in our community, ran another one of his group breaks. I've taken part before, but I had considered sitting this one out. He had fifteen slots open, good for one selected team and one random bonus team. Based on the products in this break, I didn't really mind if I missed out, and I figured that was fairly likely given he only had to convince fifteen collectors.

On offer this time around was 2017 Topps Archives, 2017 Topps Bunt, and 2017 Diamond Kings, along with his usual smattering of bonuses. Other than Archives, I wasn't entirely wowed by the products in the break. But the slots didn't fill up like I expected, and I decided to jump in to beat the buzzer. And even though we had just done a trade, I know his bonuses and throw-ins are always worthwhile.

Of course, I picked the Rockies, but by chance, I also ended up with the Diamondbacks. We'll be seeing that matchup on TBS in the NL Wild Card Game just hours from now, so this seemed like a perfect time to finally dig into the results of the break.

2017 Diamond Kings #105 Charlie Blackmon SP

I don't know much about Diamond Kings, and if Chris hadn't helpfully put this in a penny sleeve and written "Short Print" on it in black Sharpie, I wouldn't have had any idea. It's about what you'd expect, though perhaps with a bit more of a watercolor look than in past years. That red splotch toward the bottom is actually a distorted Cardinals batboy, as we can see on the back. A zoomed-out version of the artwork without the watercolor theme is found on the back, making it easy to see what's what. Panini put an elaborate frame around that image, just like what you'd see in an art museum.

And all that before I really noticed that there was no logo on Blackmon's helmet. Maybe they actually kind of know what they're doing.

2017 Diamond Kings Aurora #A-18 Nolan Arenado

This loud Arenado card is an insert from the Aurora set, no relation to the old Pacific brand. If you turn it sideways, it could be a national flag of a similarly colorful country, somewhere in the Caribbean perhaps. Panini also threw in a little gold foil to go along with the familiar playing-card surface. It really is quite different. I think Donruss was trying for something like this with some of their early-90s designs, but the execution is really quite good here.

Arenado fell a little short of the 40-homer mark this card praised him for reaching in back-to-back seasons, but he still hit the 130-RBI mark for the third straight year, something only a handful of Hall of Fame-caliber players have done. Giancarlo Stanton put two more across than Nolan did in 2017, preventing Arenado from being the first to lead the league in three straight seasons while also getting to the 130-RBI mark. But he's still a record setter and could very well earn his fifth straight Gold Glove.

2017 Topps Archives #256 Ian Desmond

This might be my first card of Ian Desmond as a Rockie. He missed about half of the team's games this year due to injury, but has still made an impact in Denver. And he picked up where Brandon Barnes left off on the tattoo front. Part of the Rockies' stacked-as-usual outfield, Desmond is shown at the plate, with his bat extending past the border of the 1992 Topps design, one that somehow doesn't "feel" like an Archives card. The card stock is definitely a little different in Archives this year.

1992 Topps was the first flagship set to be printed on white card stock, a major change that not everyone thinks should have been made. But it did allow Topps to reliably print photographs on the back, and 1992 gave us those very thin panorama shots of the team's home stadium. Coors Field had barely broken ground in 1992, and the Rockies and Marlins had yet to play a game. So this marks one of the few appearances of Coors Field in in the stretched 1992 format on the back, and while Topps did a pretty good job capturing the sold-out park, none of the iconic scoreboard in left field made it on, nor any of the picturesque sky behind it. That scoreboard, by the way, will undergo extensive renovations this winter, to go along with the popular Rooftop patio in right-center.

Now that I think about it, less than ten parks that made an appearance on the back of 1992 Topps are still around. Not even Camden Yards, which kicked off the flurry of retro-style ballparks around the league, made it on. There have been four new teams since 1992, but over twenty new stadiums. And the Braves have gone through two! It'll be interesting to see 2041's Topps Heritage set, and what the stadium situation looks like then.

2017 Topps Archives Peach #37 Jon Gray /199

Jon Gray, the probable starter for tonight's Wild Card game, was one of my hits in this break. This salmon-bordered parallel (Topps calls it Peach) of the 1960 design is numbered to just 199 copies, and Chris managed to pull one just like it of David Dahl on my behalf. Those pulls are the highlights of the break for me, at least as far as odds go.

The card back, complete with cartoon, contains the serial number, orange and black printing, and and some season highlights, including his magnificent 16-strikeout game on September 17th, 2016.

Here's hoping his performance tonight is closer to that and less like the first-inning jitters he's sometimes known for.

2017 Topps Archives '16 Retro Original #RO-19 Nolan Arenado

I got a insert card or two, and this one of Nolan is termed a "Retro Original". Sort of like all these ballparks we have now. It's vaguely reminiscent of a few different Topps designs cobbled together, such as 1986 and 1959 on the front, and maybe a bit of 1977 on the back with all that green. It even reminds me of the 2017 Allen & Ginter set, though a bit more 1960s and less late-19th century. I didn't even notice the facsimile signature, a longtime Topps fixture, until several looks at the card.

2017 Topps Archives #136 Rob Manfred

The final design used in 2017 Archives was 1982's "Hockey Sticks" design, and Chris decided I was worthy of getting a couple of MLB Commissioner cards. This one, of course, and also Bart Giamatti's card from 1990 Donruss.

Current Commissioner Rob Manfred seems open to bringing MLB further into the future, hinting that he's open to expansion, pushing for extended netting after a recent incident at Yankee Stadium, and is heavily concerned with the speed of games, introducing the rather silly intentional walk rule, despite still letting the Yankees play the Red Sox in their regular Sunday night 4-hour marathons.

Nick wrote all about this card last week, and I think that Archives as a set is obscure enough to let the Commissioner slip in. If anything, it marks that Major League Baseball is in a period of change, and it serves as a reminder that the league is, first and foremost, a business.

2017 Topps Bunt #132 Carlos Gonzalez

I've seen a few arrive via trade, but the value pack I purchased at Target was devoid of Rockies. I probably got the whole team set thanks to this break, and the print quality on these cards is ridiculously sharp. For a bargain product, I'm certainly impressed. I guess I didn't really notice until I saw this side-by-side with 2016 Bunt, from which Chris threw in a couple extras. I'd say it's pretty much on par with a Topps Now card, and the color coding with these Rockies is just gorgeous!

I guess the only critique I have is that the back could be jazzed up a bit, but if you don't want to spend big on Topps products, it's a solid offering.

That about does it for the official group break items, but anyone who's taken part in his breaks knows that there's plenty more where that came from.

2004 Topps Total Production #TP8 Todd Helton

I always liked the idea of Topps Total, but I never really got into it. During the few years this set existed, I wasn't buying a whole lot of new product. Mainly I was trying to decipher the fallout from the craziness that was the late-'90s. Shiny and Topps Total definitely occupy different compartments in my collecting mind, but here's an insert that checks both boxes. I had no idea. it's faint, much more so than 1998 Pacific Omega Online, but the background design is definitely going for a printed circuit board look.

Interestingly, the card back mentions Helton's OPS, which is helpfully defined as on-base plus slugging. It was just a couple years after the A's Moneyball season and the sudden adoption of Sabermetrics, and this is the earliest Topps card I've seen that mentions one of the new statistical categories. Helton had a significant falloff later in his career, but at the time, his career OPS trailed only Ruth, Williams, and Gehrig, according to the card.

1994 SP #169 Walt Weiss

It seems like every time I buy into one of Chris's group breaks, I end up with some 1994 SP. The shiny copper gets me every time, and I can't get enough of that gold hologram. I don't know where he gets them all, but I'll take it.

Walt Weiss certainly looked a lot younger in his playing days, compared to his recent managerial stint with the Rockies. The photo on the back shows Weiss flashing the sign of the horns, indicating to his outfielders that there are two outs. Just like I did in little league! "Infield, tell the outfield!", our coach would say. And I was usually in the outfield, except during the minimum of two innings when each kid had to play an infield position.

On the front, Weiss is in Mile High Stadium, with what looks like the Braves logo displayed on the outfield wall (it's tough to tell on the scan), back when teams all over the league had logos of their competitors plastered all over the place.

This might have been pretty early in the 1994 season, maybe even before the Rockies got their first win against the Braves, their old division nemesis. Yes, the Braves used to be in the NL West, and I had always assumed that was because they used to be based in Milwaukee but never had a chance to be realigned until the six-division system was created. But no, the Braves were already in Atlanta by the time East and West divisions were created, meaning they had almost a solid quarter-century of schlepping out to California from Atlanta on a regular basis.

And I thought the Astros in the AL West was questionable.

Maybe that's why it took me so long to figure that one out. Houston's definitely not in the West. At least not like Seattle is.

2012 Bowman Chrome Draft Draft Picks #BDPP113 Scott Oberg

Bowman Chrome isn't quite as shiny as that copper masterpiece, but this card is notable for a different reason. The subject, Scott Oberg, is actually a Major Leaguer, which is rather unusual for a Bowman card. The reliever appeared in a whopping 66 games this season, and got the Rockies out of a few dicey situations.

Not bad for a 15th-round pick from UConn.

2012 Topps Update #US123 Jamie Moyer

Unlike his uniform number, Jamie Moyer wasn't quite 50 when he won on April 17th, 2012, becoming the oldest player to ever earn a Win in the Major Leagues. He even broke his own record about a month later, just a couple days before turning 49 1/2. Both wins came in divisional games at Coors Field, and he had a way better final season than Roy Oswalt.

Rockies are rarely featured on the checklist cards. Helton's retirement got a card in 2014, but that's the only other one that comes to mind. But unlike Helton's checklist, Moyer's card is properly color-coded to fit in with the rest of his teammates. And this is not quite a meta-checklist, where the card's number appears on the card itself, but Jamie Moyer's actual card number shows up about halfway down the third column.

2001 Upper Deck #261 Ben Petrick

Ben Petrick got a card in 2001 Upper Deck, striking a similar pose to Ian Desmond's follow-through. He's swinging a big bat, and there was a ton of white space on the vertical back of the card, plenty of room to fill with a long career. However, as we know now, it was not to be. Unbeknownst to the Rockies, he was battling Parkinson's disease from the young age of 22. That he was able to put together a Major League career of any length while contending with that is amazing enough, let alone five seasons at the grueling position of catcher.

And I still remember him as "the guy whose autograph I almost got."

2000 Fleer Tradition #35 Pedro Astacio

Even though he's in the career top ten in most Rockies pitching categories, I don't find too many Pedro Astacio cards. He's in the top three for strikeouts, and is at the very top for complete games and strikeout-to-walk ratio, but on the other hand, no Rockie has ever hit more batters or allowed more home runs.

Also, in looking over those stats, I noticed that late reliever and occasional closer Steve Reed was finally knocked off his perch on the Rockies top-ten list for Wins. Tyler Chatwood earned his 34th win in mid-September, ending one of the more astonishing statistical oddities out of the Rockies bullpen.

The blue background on his 2000 Fleer Tradition card is probably better-suited to his Dodger days, so it's maybe not the best selection to debut him on the blog. I'll keep an eye out for another card, perhaps one that better shows him in action. Or at least one with more purple.

1997 Collector's Choice Teams #CR11 Ellis Burks

At first, I assumed this was a duplicate, but in looking a bit more closely, it's actually from a team set that Collector's Choice put out in 1997. Only ten teams got that treatment, obviously including the Rockies. For some reason, the Rockies seem to be pretty well-represented in this type of offering, including both years of Topps Team Stadium Club. But I've never seen a Topps buyback card.

The "Did You Know?" fact on the back is about Eric Young and the four times he's led off a game with a home run, which was then a Rockies record. I don't know for certain, but I feel confident that Charlie Blackmon had to have passed that record by now, if for no other reason than he set the all-time record for RBIs as a leadoff hitter this season, with 103.

2014 Topps Heritage #404 Charlie Blackmon

Speaking of Charlie Blackmon, when was the last time you saw him without his trademark beard? Well, other than his rookie card from 2011 Topps Update, one you may have run across in search of Mike Trout's from the same set? 2014 was his breakout year, the same year as this 1965-themed Heritage set. I saw his 6-for-6 game on Opening Day 2014, which was also the first day The Rooftop was open at Coors Field. He's only gotten better since then, helping put the Rockies in the playoffs for the first time in eight years, and making a pretty strong case for the NL MVP award.

2009 Upper Deck #621 Chris Iannetta

2009 Upper Deck was one of Chris's bonus products in the group break. Catcher Chris Iannetta fell out of one of those packs, who was a Rockie from 2006 to 2011, a timeframe that spanned both their last two Postseason appearances, but Iannetta didn't have a Postseason appearance in either year.

That does not leave me with a good feeling. I feel like that may come back to haunt the Rockies, because Iannetta is now a Diamondback, after finally getting a taste of October baseball in 2014 with the Angels.

Or maybe it will be Daniel Descalso, or Jorge De La Rosa.

The Rockies and Diamondbacks seem inextricably linked. The two teams even share a spring training facility. And they've swapped a lot of players over the years. Gerardo Parra or could just as easily sink the D-backs tonight. Or Mark Reynolds.

After being swept in the 2007 NLCS by the Rockies, I'm sure the Diamondbacks can't wait to take the field to try to get their revenge. They'll have their ace on the mound, as will the Rockies.

I can't wait!