The Trading Post #155: Topps Cards That Never Were (Part 2: Newer Rockies)

Picking up right where we left off in Part 1, we're looking at some of the best recent Rockies cards from a trade I did with Jeremy at Topps Cards That Never Were. Here's a link to his end of the trade, in case you're curious. There are two more postseason games happening tonight, a backdrop I quite enjoy when cranking out a couple thousand words about baseball cards. Although, NLCS Game 3 was over pretty much before it began.

2014 Topps Gold #20 Charlie Blackmon /2014

Transitioning from Terry Shumpert's 2001 Topps Gold card in Part 1, here's what Topps Gold looked like in 2014. The gold border is still there, but the foil is just the usual silver we saw on 2014 base cards. They didn't have this in 2001, either, but I miss the "ToppsGold" logo that we saw very early in this parallel's life, back in, say, 1994.

Additionally, you'll obviously notice this is what Charlie Blackmon looks like without facial hair. We're not used to seeing him like this at all. I see his 2011 Topps Update Rookie Card quite frequently, and that throws people for a loop, too. We just don't really recognize him without that scraggly beard.

Another change from 2001 Topps Gold is the color of the serial number on the back. Topps still sets the print run equal to the calendar year, meaning these become ever-so-slightly more common with each passing year, but the gold foil serial number is no more, as you can see below. It's just a plain black.

2014 Topps Gold #20 Charlie Blackmon /2014 (Reverse)

Note that Blackmon had a scorching-hot end to his 2013 season, earning NL Player of the Week honors as 2013 neared its end, hitting an even .500 that week.

2018 Donruss Holo Green #235 Charlie Blackmon RETRO

That's a bit more like the Charlie Blackmon we've come to know and love. I'm not sure which road park he's in here, but Panini selected a good photo for an unlicensed set. Blackmon's forearm obscures where "COLORADO" would be lettered across his uniform, making the job of the photo editor that much easier.

This is the second consecutive post in which we've seen the 1984 Donruss design, and it is one of their better ones. The Rockies weren't a team back in '84, but this design accepts new teams quite well, something that can't always be said for '80s sets. "Diamondbacks" is particularly hard to squeeze in to some designs. But licensed or not, Rockies and Colorado fit in these yellow swoops just fine.

Obviously, this one has a green border, my favorite special color to find on a card. Panini goes totally overboard with the number of parallels, so it's a bit of a guessing game, but I'm confident in identifying this one as the Holo Green version. It's a little hard to tell, because only the border has any sort of shininess to it. The card itself is glossy, but it's really just the edges that give you the rainbow look.

2018 Topps Rainbow Foil #559 Ian Desmond

2018 Topps, on the other hand, did this whole card up in rainbow foil, edge to edge. Topps kept this reasonably simple and just called this parallel "Rainbow Foil". It's a pretty card, and will fit nicely right next to a similar David Dahl card that Night Owl sent my way.

Another benefit of this shiny card is that I can disingenuously say that I have the 2018 Topps Ian Desmond Rainbow, even though almost all the other parallels are absent from my collection.

But I wouldn't do that.

I'm not sure how 2021 Topps sets will treat players who opted out of the 2020 season. They'll have to dig into the photo archives deeper than usual, as I imagine they would do anyway. I can't imagine that empty stands would look great on a card, and there were far fewer photographers than usual at 2020 games. Ian Desmond missed it all, as he decided to opt out. I certainly would have done the same.

2016 Topps Chrome Prism Refractors #37 DJ LeMahieu

DJ LeMahieu decided to play, and earned himself another batting title for his efforts. He hit .364 for the Yankees, becoming the first modern player to win a batting title in both leagues. It's a shame the Rockies didn't keep him. They didn't even make him an offer.

That means that cards like this of him facing an NL West team are unlikely to surface again. A version of this card has appeared here before, thanks again to Night Owl, but this time it has one of the many refractor patterns instead of snowflakes. I believe this is the Prism Refractor, but nowhere on the back does it say so.

Seriously, is there anything more frustrating about Topps Chrome other than Topps seemingly using a coin flip each year to decide whether to label a refractor?

Well, the curl, I guess. This one isn't bad.

What is on the card back is a paragraph telling us that the 6'4" LeMahieu is the tallest everyday second baseman to play the position since George "High Pockets" Kelly back in 1925. That's of course an all-time great baseball nickname, and it rang a bell this year. I remember hearing his name on the Rockies broadcast at some point this season, but I couldn't quite recall why. A Twitter search led me to the Giants' blowout of the Rockies on September 1st, in which Alex Dickerson hit three home runs and had five total hits. The only other Giant to do that was High Pockets himself, way back in 1923, one of many excellent performances on his way to a Hall of Fame career.

2017 Topps Gold #81 DJ LeMahieu LL /2017

One year after that card, DJ got a league leader card for that 2016 batting title I mentioned earlier. He beat Daniel Murphy by just a point, hitting .348. A little lower than .364, yes, but keep in mind that 2016 was a full season. 

This Series 1 card is another example of a Topps Gold card, and without a border, it's pretty difficult for Topps to get that message across. There are a few gold-colored shapes in the background, and the bottom banners have just a little bit of shiny foil. The card back does have a serial number, but it's black, just like Blackmon's Gold card that led this post off. 

2017 Topps Update #US27b Nolan Arenado SP

This is a more accurate example of 2017 Topps base cards. The banners aren't shiny at all, and the only foil to be found is the silver Topps logo. The banner appears on these horizontal cards at a shallower angle, intruding on the photo a little less. Thanks to that, we get to see the curly W on Bryce Harper's left sleeve, part of a snapshot of NL teammates Harper and Nolan Arenado at the 2017 All-Star Game.

Jeremy helpfully set this one apart, because it happens to be a short-printed variation. I appreciate that, because I don't know these sets nearly well enough to spot the gimmick cards at a glance. 

There are quite a few highlights from Nolan's career on the card back, such as his walk-off home run on June 18th, 2017, which completed the cycle. That was on Father's Day, and is one of the most frequent recent highlights the Rockies use in TV spots. He had 50 extra base-hits in the first half of 2017, but the stat that really caught my eye is that he didn't make an error until June 1st. He's that good in the field, and that's why he keeps winning the Platinum Glove.

2012 Topps Career Day #CD-24 Troy Tulowitzki

Troy Tulowitzki had games like that, too. That's the subject of this 2012 Topps insert set called Career Day. It's 25 cards in total, and Tulo shares the checklist with some truly legendary Hall of Famers. We can see on the front that he had an excellent game on August 10th, 2009, and flipping the card over gives us his complete stats that day. He went 5-for-5 and hit for the cycle, defeating the Chicago Cubs. At the time, that was the fifth cycle in Rockies history.

Get used to seeing inserts like these, because they're going to make up all of Part 4 (and Part 5 depending on how deep the gold mine goes).

2011 Topps Chrome Vintage Chrome #VC33 Troy Tulowitzki

Here's another Tulowitzki insert card, known as Vintage Chrome. It's a 50-card set modeled after the debut 1996 Topps Chrome set. This isn't a perfect replica of the design, as the original had an array of tiny diamonds across the whole card. This is a lot more like a mirror finish, and has the least amount of curl I can ever remember on a Chrome card.

I'm almost certain that this is from the same game as the photo from Tulo's 2011 Topps base card (and by extension, Opening Day). The unknown Royal isn't present in this photo, but the same sign is behind Tulowitzki on the outfield wall, placing him in Kaufman Stadium. I believe that's an ad for Buck Night, a promo the Royals run where all sorts of food and goodies within the ballpark are priced at just $1.

The card back is also an accurate reproduction of 1996 Topps, and the paragraph mentions Tulowitzki's hot September 2010, in which he had 15 homers and 40 RBIs, putting him on par with Babe Ruth in his dominant 1927 season. I found that surprising. We all know that Babe Ruth set his asterisk-free home run record of 60 back in 1927, but I didn't know that fully 17 of them came in the final month of that legendary season. 

If you think about the way we track a season's worth of home runs these days, Ruth wouldn't have been on pace to set his own record until the final week or so.

2019 Topps 150th Anniversary #346 Chris Iannetta

One last modern-looking card before we get to a few retro sets. It's the newest one of the day, just a year old from the 2019 set. I ran across this 150th Anniversary parallel set in one of my first posts of 2020, not knowing what a crazy year we'd be in for. Nevertheless, the 150th Anniversary logo was used in 2019 Topps Series 1 and 2, not just Update like I saw in that post. 

By this point in his career, the recently-retired Chris Iannetta had a long enough career to crowd out room for a paragraph on the back. Between that and a complete list of statistics, I'll take the statistics. 

I mentioned that I split the Older Rockies and Newer Rockies into two posts, separating them right around the time of their 2007 Pennant. Iannetta was there for that glorious season, but he returned to the Rockies for his final two Major League seasons. We'll see that happen once more by the time this post ends.

On to the retro sets.

2009 Topps 206 Bronze #247 Huston Street

Topps 206 is one of those classic brands that sporadically hits the market every eight or ten years. You can never really be sure when it's the "final" year of something, can you? It's back for 2020 as a Topps Online Exclusive, but I haven't been interested enough to purchase any. I'm sure I'll see it come my way at some point in the next decade.

This card allows me to have shown all three Topps 206 sets on the blog, excluding 2020. I feel like it may have been an insert set at some point, but maybe I'm thinking of Turkey Red. Retro sets aren't my area of expertise.

Huston Street's card here is a Bronze parallel, an extra thick version of an already thick set. It looks fine from the front, but appears to be a little miscut on the back. Nothing serious, though. I especially like Street's old-style glove he's posing with. He definitely never used that in a real game, but how awesome would that be?

2011 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini A&G Back #193 Jorge De La Rosa

It's common to find minis when we're dealing with retro sets, and one came along in the form of a 2011 Allen & Ginter back variation. When you flip it over, you get a portrait of the same guy I saw on a Bazooka back variation that Nick sent long ago.

2008 Topps Heritage #317 Matt Holliday / Hanley Ramirez

Concluding Part 2 is a two-player subset card from 2008 Topps Heritage. It's based on the 1959 set, the first-ever vintage set to enter my collection. Like Chris Iannetta, Matt Holliday had two stints with the Rockies, returning in 2018 for a final playoff run before retiring. This card is from his first go-round with Colorado, and it documents his near-MVP performance in 2007. He led the NL in a bunch of statistics, including doubles, RBI, hits, and that frequent Rockies accolade, batting average. Holliday hit .340 in 2007, and while he narrowly lost the MVP award to Jimmy Rollins, he was named MVP of the 2007 NLCS.

Holliday's card mate is Hanley Ramírez, then a member of the Florida Marlins. They were still called the Florida Marlins at this point, and hadn't changed to that crazy shade of green you see in the Arenado/Harper card above. Hanley didn't lead any categories in 2007, but according to the card, he narrowly missed matching Eric Davis and Barry Bonds in putting together a season with 30 home runs and 50 stolen bases. No one really talks about the 30/50 club, but that is an impressive showing of both power and speed, even if he only made it to 29/51.

If you like oddballs, don't miss Part 3!

The Trading Post #23: Cards From the Quarry (Part 1: Not Topps)

Given that I'm rather fond of the Colorado Rockies, it's only proper that I should be trading with the most well-known Rockies blogger out there, hiflew from Cards From the Quarry. I've mentioned some of his work before, such as his Quarry Unlimited custom sets, but after I commented on his want list post saying I had a few needs, he offered to send back a bunch of his Rockies extras to "a good home".

A small flat-rate box showed up not long ago, packed full of those Rockies extras. As you might expect from a collector focused on the same team I like, there were a ton of great cards in there. So many, in fact, that I had to break this up into two posts. This first part will cover the best of the non-Topps cards, starting with the late Darryl Kile, who pitched for the Rockies for two years.

1998 Ultra #303 Darryl Kile

There's plenty of green on that card, including most of the outfield behind Kile fielding a comebacker, as well as the raised foil lettering. The design is pretty typical of a Fleer Ultra set, especially with that script font.

Pacific was always trying to be one of the big boys in the card collecting world, often one of the first to put forth some minor innovations, such as listing which set a card was part of near the card number. Upper Deck didn't adopt that until many years later.

Topps is well-known these days for short-printed photo variations, and there has been lots of buzz about this year's SPs with the recent release of 2015 Topps. However, Pacific was printing photo variations long before Topps became known for it.

1999 Pacific #141 Dante Bichette

1999 Pacific #141a Dante Bichette (Headshot)

Like Topps, these Pacific "headshot" cards (on right) don't really differentiate themselves from the base cards (on left) unless you already know what to look for. It's hard to know that you're holding something unusual without having the run-of-the-mill version right alongside it. And even then, you don't know which is the rare one. However, Pacific did it a bit differently than Topps' does, in that there are different player photos on the back of each card.

I don't have an issue with having different varieties on the market; in fact, David Freese's Rally Squirrel card is one of my favorites in recent years. I just wish there was less of a super-secret-handshake feel to them. Just print it as card 141b or something.

Any trade package with mid-'90s cards is bound to have lots of shiny, and 1997 Pinnacle Certified certainly fits that bill.

1997 Pinnacle Certified #86 Eric Young

This set might hold the record for pure reflectivity. You could probably shave or tie a tie by using those mirrored triangles in each lower corner. Not only that, but this set comes with a peel-off coating that is way easier to remove than Topps Finest. The card backs in this set are a bit like overproduction-era Bowman cards because they break down the previous season's stats by opponent, rather than just a whole year's performance on one line.

The shininess doesn't end there; although this Castilla isn't reflective enough to put on your side-view mirrors.

1995 Flair #128 Vinny Castilla

Fleer's ultra-premium Flair brand made some of the thickest cards around in the mid-1990s. The brand got pretty weird toward the end of that decade by jumping on the insane "fractured set" bandwagon, but prior to that, you could always count on sharp photography, thick card stock, usually some cursive, and something that wouldn't look entirely out of place on the end of a gold chain.

The post-strike hobby was a weird place. Like many collectors that return after a long hiatus, I'm still finding cards and sets from that era that I had no idea about.

1996 Pinnacle Aficionado #152 Larry Walker GR

Ever heard of Pinnacle Aficionado? I sure hadn't. And the above isn't even a standard base card; it's from the Global Reach subset. That black background of latitude/longitude lines and the map of Canada is made of a strange, raised black surface that is rough to the touch.

Donruss Studio was still alive and kicking in 2004, and one of their insert sets that year is pretty similar to the 1995 base set. You know, the one that was supposed to look like a credit card.

2004 Studio Stars #48 Todd Helton

Though they don't have raised lettering or a facsimile of a magnetic stripe, Studio Stars aren't cardboard at all. This insert set is made of a flimsy plastic like an insurance or library card. Donruss also made a fairly serious goof by sticking a Diamondbacks logo right on top of that checkered background of Rockies logos.

I've blogged about the 2008 Baseball Heroes set before, but I don't think I've yet shown one of the black parallels, one of the many colors you'll find this set in.

2008 Upper Deck Heroes Black #57 Troy Tulowitzki

Though he was instrumental in bringing the Rockies to the World Series in 2007, Tulo finished as the runner up for the 2007 NL Rookie of the Year award, as this card notes. He finished a very close second to Ryan Braun. Of the two, I'll point out that since then, only one has been to a World Series, and only one has been suspended for much of a season for violating MLB's drug policy.

Perhaps Tulo's second-place finish isn't as big a snub as Ken Griffey, Jr. finishing third in 1989, but I think that voters made the wrong call by picking Braun.

But that's water under the bridge, so let's move on to something a little more fun.

1999 Fleer Tradition #311 Jamey Wright

Not only is this a fantastic shot of the right-center stands at Coors Field, but it's always amusing to see a pitcher storing his glove on his head. I usually tucked it under my arm or on the end of my bat when I needed impromptu glove storage, but then again, I never got my call-up. Maybe Jamey Wright knows something I don't.

One thing I do know for sure is that the Rockies play in a beautiful state, one I am proud to call home.

There are a few cards that show off the glory of the Rockies (the mountains, not the team), like the card backs of 1993 Leaf...

1993 Leaf #244 Freddie Benavides (Reverse)

...and this multi-player card from the legendary 1993 Upper Deck set.

1993 Upper Deck #478 Dante Bichette / David Nied / Andres Galarraga

But those are just plain photographs. What if it were 1998 and we wanted to make it shiny and difficult to scan?

Then you'd have 1998 Metal Universe.

1998 Metal Universe #151 Mike Lansing

Mike Lansing joined the Rockies prior to the 1998 season, so he's still shown as an Expo. But Fleer's Skybox division found a lovely autumn shot of the mountains, complete with a twisted-up log partially submerged in a high-altitude lake. There are lots of places like that in Colorado, so it could be anywhere.

But I know where this one is.

1998 Metal Universe #39 Vinny Castilla

Though the scans don't do either of these cards justice, those are the Maroon Bells, a pair of 14,000-ft. mountains just outside Aspen. They're some of Colorado's most iconic peaks, and judging by how much snow is still up there, that photograph was probably taken in late spring; likely early June.

This weekend has brought unseasonably warm weather to the Denver area, and it won't be long until the Maroon Bells look like that once again.

Baseball will be well underway by then.