The Trading Post #124: Blog Reader Chris

Not everyone who reads this blog has a blog of their own. Some are just avid readers, and presumably have stuck around even though it's taken close to a year for me to write a proper post about cards they've sent me. This marks the second occasion that reader Chris has sent cards, and he definitely has some great Rockies cards at his disposal.

2005 Ultra Gold Medallion #186 Preston Wilson

Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion parallels remind me how much I miss this set. Other than Topps, Fleer was my preferred brand when I first discovered collecting. These parallels always had a nice differentiation over the years, in this case an aesthetically-pleasing die cut, with a simple curve in the upper right that neatly complements Wilson's photo on the card back.

My only criticism of this card is that the fonts are a little strange. The name lettering on the bottom looks roughly like what a team logo would look like if Preston Wilson were his own team. On the back, the "5"s look a little too much like "S"s, and the card number itself doesn't really stand out despite how large it is. But those are minor gripes, and the card industry could really use a brand like this again.

Maybe Stadium Club will look like this in a few years.

2007 Upper Deck Elements #15 Todd Helton

A trade package of this size is a lot like a tiny dime box. A few parallels, some commons which were already in my collection, and lots of shiny Todd Helton cards. This Upper Deck Elements card is from that magical year of 2007, and it points out that Helton had a stellar batting average, which ended up at .316 for his career.

It isn't just shiny; it also has a refractor finish, and lots of gold and silver arcs surrounding his photo. It might even be a night card, or at least early evening, since there are some stadium lights reflecting off of Helton's batting helmet. I'm surprised I haven't shown this set on the blog yet. I have quite a few cards from it in my collection, over two full pages. Surprisingly for a set like this, there are no parallels other than printing plates.

2008 Upper Deck Spectrum #33 Todd Helton

A similar set from a year later is UD Spectrum. Elements only lasted a year; Spectrum made it until 2009. This set you have seen before, in both base and relic fashion. That attractive turquoise color, which would be well-suited to a Marlins card, is used across all teams, at least all the teams I've seen. We also get an excellent example of a first baseman's mitt.

Helton apparently grew his goatee between these two sets, and remained the face of the Rockies throughout. He led, and continues to lead, a plethora of Rockies categories, records he will certainly hold for many years to come, depending on how Nolan Arenado's free agency goes.

2006 Ultra Diamond Producers #DP11 Todd Helton

Helton could, and did, hit for average, but he also had great power. Fleer Ultra's Diamond Producers insert set, which missed an opportunity to put some shiny jewels at the corners of the diamond, tells us that his .337 average at the time led all active players, and that his eight straight seasons above .315 was only the third time a first baseman had done that. No idea who the other two are, but that's an impressive stat. I hope his Hall of Fame voting numbers reflect that. Stats-wise, he's on par with Stan Musial.

His average trailed off in later years, that .316 number tying him precisely with Bichette and Galarraga on the team leaderboard.

2008 Upper Deck StarQuest Rare #7 Matt Holliday

Unlike UD Elements which only had one flavor, the Starquest insert set had quite a few colored varieties. The green variety from Upper Deck First Edition arrived early in the life of Infield Fly Rule (it's five years old today!), but this pale blue version is classified as "Rare", with two more versions beyond that, "Super Rare" and "Ultra Rare".

2005 Topps Opening Day #136 Matt Holliday

Matt Holliday made a high-profile but relatively low-impact return to his first team late in 2018. He hit two home runs in 25 regular-season games, and got another taste of Postseason baseball in October. He scored a run in the Wild Card game, which took place right here in Wrigley Field, as pictured on this 2005 Opening Day card. Perhaps one of my friendly Cubs fan buddies can help identify the infielder who's applying a late tag to Holliday.

The card back mentions Jeromy Burnitz, who was then a teammate of Holliday, and who was coached by Matt's father at Oklahoma State. Burnitz even spent a season with the Cubbies in 2005. The card also tells us about the Rockies' win on May 18, 2004, a game in which Burnitz and Holliday hit back-to-back home runs, twice. It happened in the second inning and again in the seventh.

And before you shout "Coors!", that was a road game in Cincinnati.

2007 SP Rookie Edition #102 Jeff Baker (RC)

Just in case it's not already hard enough to read gold lettering on gold foil, Upper Deck decided to put a whole row of backslashes behind Jeff Baker's name and position. It might be a record-setter of illegibility. It is plenty shiny, though, and is reminiscent of 1994 Upper Deck with the smaller photo area off to the side.

This photo was taken in Hi Corbett Field in Tucson, Arizona. I've been there; trust me. But it was definitely warmer than 44 degrees Fahrenheit then. This shot for Baker's rookie card must have been taken quite early in the morning at the very start of Spring Training. 44 degrees in southern Arizona is chilly.

2002 Leaf Certified #36 Jason Jennings

The base card of Jason Jennings from 2002 Leaf Certified is new to my collection, but I did already have the relic version, complete with purple fabric. That card congratulated me on my good fortune of owning a relic of the 2002 NL Rookie of the Year, the only Rockie to win the award. The base card gave us a more traditional card back, with the requisite paragraph of Jennings' accomplishments, such as seven straight wins in early 2002.

Those little pine trees behind the center field wall were just babies back then. It's grown enough that it's possible for a TV spot shot there to look like it's really in the woods.

2008 Finest Refractors #13 Troy Tulowitzki

Troy Tulowitzki spent lots of time at Coors Field, but he'll finally be realizing a lifelong dream of playing for the New York Yankees. He'll have to give up his uniform number 2 to play there, but he'll be covering the same ground that his idol Derek Jeter did not long ago. He'll also be joined by DJ LeMahieu, who just signed a two-year, $24 million contract in the Bronx.

Needless to say, I'll be following the Yankees this year. I wouldn't even be surprised if they're punting on the Machado / Harper frenzy this year to try to land Arenado next offseason.

Topps was quick to honor the young star in its 2008 Finest set. Tulo had a heck of a year in 2007, just barely missing the Rookie of the Year award, finishing second to Ryan Braun. He also made it to the World Series, of course. And this refractor's key stat is about Tulo turning the 13th unassisted triple play in MLB history. The card tells us it was only the 12th in the regular season; that's because one of them took place during the 1920 World Series.

Those are a pair of fun facts about the World Series. The only triple play was also unassisted, and the only no-hitter was also a perfect game.

1994 Pinnacle #446 Andres Galarraga

1994 Pinnacle took it much easier on the gold foil than 2007 SP Rookie Edition. Everything is readable, and Pinnacle selected a great action shot for their first full bleed design. Andres Galarraga is feeding one his pitcher as second baseman Roberto Mejia covers in the background. The orange outline on the outfield wall places this in Candlestick Park, and I particularly like how the shadow of Galarraga's mitt projects on his leg.

This card doesn't have a paragraph on the back, although it does highlight his .422 batting average with Runners in Scoring Position. That's clutch, and even better than his .370 overall average, which won the NL batting title in 1993. Pinnacle gives us just a little extra gold foil on the front of the card for this award winner, something Topps used to do rather than create a whole bunch of extra league leader cards.

1996 Pacific Estrellas Latinas #EL-8 Vinny Castilla

Pacific, on the other hand, did whatever it could get away with. Behind Vinny Castilla is a chaotic maze of gold foil, almost like it was etched by a slime mold or something, There are a few five-pointed stars in there for good measure. It's part of a 36-card insert set called Estrellas Latinas, or Latin Stars. I don't know Spanish that well, but I wonder if it shouldn't have instead been Estrellas Latinos. The primary paragraph on the back is in Spanish, translated beneath that in English, and it tells us that the 1995 Rockies had four hitters with 30 homers or more. He was in the same club with fellow Blake Street Bombers Larry Walker, Dante Bichette, and Andres Galarraga. And that was in a strike-shortened year.

The black background makes this a great-looking card. I particularly like the Rockies logo with the black backdrop in the lower right.

1998 Fleer Tradition #599 Larry Walker UM

Hall of Fame candidate Larry Walker got a card in this 1998 Fleer insert set, which looks like it has a little 1995 Fleer DNA. That's a watch movement in the background, sprinkled with a few "1998" numerals. The unforgettable moment in question, if we flip to the back where Walker has magically grown a goatee, was his game on May 21st, 1996. He had 13 total bases that night against the Pirates, which was two home runs, a double, and a triple. Even better than the cycle. The next day, Fleer tells us, he had two more triples and a double, setting an NL record for consecutive extra-base hits.

I don't have specific memories of any of that, but I do remember the night before. I was at the game on May 20th, 1996, another win over the Pirates. I remember that ex-Rockie Charlie Hayes hit a home run, and got a friendly standing ovation. My seat happened to be next to an older fan named Neil, and I came pretty close to catching a ball in batting practice near the right field foul pole.

Yeah, my memory from that age is pretty sharp. It was my second-ever trip to Coors Field. Mr. Walker even had a hit and two RBIs.

2000 Vanguard #64 Ben Petrick

Just like in my last post, there was a card of Ben Petrick in here. The card describes him as "Colorado's backstop of the future." Sadly, that was not to be the case.

This thick card is from a set of just 100 cards, and the base set is new to my collection. Apparently, I already have a Barry Bonds card from the High Voltage insert set. Vanguard only lasted for a single year, but it could have been a premium fixture in Pacific's lineup. It might even be acetate-on-cardboard. The blue star in the set logo gives it the look of a minor-league set, and the Rookie logo in the lower left is a design unique to Pacific.

2007 Bowman Heritage Rainbow Foil #128 Willy Taveras

Our final selection from this stack is a shiny Bowman Heritage card of Willy Taveras. It's even thicker than Petrick's Pacific card, and has that slightly unusual look of shiny foil on old-fashioned cardboard.

Willy Taveras doesn't show up around here very often, but he was the regular center fielder in the pennant year of 2007. The speedster also led the majors in stolen bases the following year, with 68. He was bit invisible among the major stars of Helton, Holliday, and Tulowitzki, but he patrolled the cavernous center field at Coors, which is one of the more difficult jobs out there. He appeared in two World Series during his seven-year career, but lost them both, one with the Astros in 2005, then with the Rockies in 2007.

This was a great selection of cards from the earlier days of the Rockies' history, and even a few sets I had never seen before. Chris, if you're still following me, thank you very much!

The Devilishly Affordable Group Break

A long time ago in this exact galaxy, specifically back in August, Colbey at Cardboard Collections ran an affordable group break that cost only $6. It wasn't the latest and greatest product, but he did have two Fleer products from the mid-2000s on offer, both of which are underrepresented in my collection, so I joined. Who could keep up with all those Fleer releases back then, anyway? As we wrap up 2017, I thought I'd take a look at this stack before the ball drops. At least then I could keep the post in the same calendar year.

2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition #2 Preston Wilson

First up is 2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition (JE), a set I'd never even heard of before, let alone collected. Presumably, there were some relics to be found in this set, but I didn't have the good fortune of nabbing any with my two team slots. Fleer also tied in the player's uniform number into the print run of the Century parallels, adding 100 to their number. Frank Thomas, for example, had a print run of 135. The base cards are nicely color-coded, giving us a clean, if verbose, design. Between the right vertical banner and the set logo, "Focus Jersey Editon" appears twice.

I guess with so many Fleer sets on the market, they really wanted us to know which was which. Don't forget that Fleer also tells us on the fine print in the back. Topps is (sort of) finally doing this, but that is one thing I miss dearly about both Fleer and Upper Deck. We all know the yellow-bordered set is 1991 Fleer, but as more and more sets hit the market, there's a real need for some identification.

In a move which should surprise no one, I selected the Rockies for my primary team slot. Preston Wilson was about to join the Rockies after his first five seasons as a Marlin (save for his two weeks as a rookie Met), coming over in an offseason trade with Charles Johnson and a couple others in return for Mike Hampton and Juan Pierre. The Florida Marlins (yes, before they were known as the Miami Marlins) promptly flipped Hampton, but they kept Pierre and went on to win their second World Series in 2003. Juan Pierre certainly drew the lucky hand that year.

Like most well-known Marlins, Pierre was traded away during their 2005 fire sale, an event that the Marlins seem to hold about once a decade with alarming regularity. Obviously, we're in the middle of one now, and Preston Wilson didn't even survive this one, as he and Jeff Conine were both shown the door of the broadcast booth.

2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition #127 Jose Hernandez

Journeyman infielder Jose Hernandez has only appeared on this blog once before, on another 2003 card, his only year as a Rockie in a long, 15-season career, which immediately followed his only All-Star appearance. Fleer only gave us five years of stats on the back, and a giant, empty gray box below it, leaving us to wonder about his Major League performance dating back to 1991. I vaguely remember his time in Denver, but I can't say I knew how much time he'd spent in the league. I probably have tons of overproduction-era cards of him, but had no idea it was the same guy.

I don't entirely agree with Topps' latest method of only printing the last five years of statistics, especially in this era of Sabermetrics and StatCast. We should be getting more stats, not fewer. But at least they're not tantalizingly filling up the card backs only halfway like Fleer did.

2003 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition #128 Ben Grieve

The team I ended up with in the random selection was the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the other Florida team that's undergone a name change in their short history. I guess it makes sense for the Marlins to rename since they're no longer the only team in Florida, which makes you wonder how the Angels got away with being the California Angels for so long. That leaves the Rockies, Rangers, Twins, and Diamondbacks as the only teams named after their states instead of their cities. There's a touch of ambiguity in the Yankees and Mets, but the state name came after the city, so I'd file those two under the "city" column.

Going the opposite direction down that path leads to some very odd-sounding names, like the Washington Mariners, Wisconsin Brewers (not to be confused with the Badgers), the Ontario Blue Jays, the Ohio Reds, and the Maryland Orioles.

Maybe that's why Major League teams tend to go for a city name; they sound a bit like colleges otherwise.

But back to the card. Ben Grieve had cooled off after his red-hot start to interleague play against the Rockies, and spent a little time on America's (southern) third coast. As we can see in the lower left corner, Grieve coincidentally wore the number 18, just like the Rockies' Jose Hernandez. And in the checklist, this is exactly one card further down the stack (or up the stack, depending on which direction you hand-collate). He's precariously balanced on his right heel, and happens to be wearing a wrist band that precisely matches the Rays' later colors after they dropped the "Devil".

2005 Fleer Showcase #106 Scott Kazmir ST

The second set was 2005 Fleer Showcase, a wonderfully color-coded set that uses a lot of thin silver foil lines. I had six cards from this set already, so at least I had a little familiarity with this one. Tampa Bay's team was still known as the Devil Rays at this point, keeping that name until 2008, the same year they finally reached the Postseason. In fact, they'd lose the World Series that year, following in the Rockies' footsteps and crossing their name off the short list of teams without a World Series appearance.

None of the base cards that Colbey pulled from 2005 Showcase depicted a Rockie, nor do any of my other six cards, but this is my first from the short-printed Showcasing Talent subset. That makes this an odd set in my collection, one in which I have no Rockies but at least a dozen or so base cards.

I picked Scott Kazmir as the first one to show, a southpaw who led the AL in strikeouts in 2007. I selected him in a Fantasy baseball draft or two, and I even saw him in person when he was an Angel, toeing the rubber against A.J. Burnett when the Yankees visited Anaheim on September 23rd, 2009. That was the only regular season Major League game I've had a chance to see outside of Denver.

Kazmir didn't pitch in 2017, but his name crossed the wire a few weeks ago, as the Dodgers shipped him and a few other former stars off to the Braves for Matt Kemp. Scott Kazmir, Adrian Gonzalez, Brandon McCarthy, and ex-Rockie Charlie Culberson for Matt Kemp sounds like a mega-blockbuster, until you remember that this isn't 2011 anymore.

2005 Fleer Showcase #66 Carl Crawford

Carl Crawford would fit into that transaction perfectly, and the Dodgers might have actually included him if the last of his giant contract didn't finally expire at the end of the 2017 season. The speedy outfielder inked a monster deal with the Red Sox in 2011, but he was almost immediately plagued by injury problems. The Red Sox managed to get the Dodgers to take him off their hands, and the Dodgers finally cut him in 2016, while still owing him tens of millions of dollars.

But once upon a time, he was the best base stealer in the American League, and led the league in triples three years in a row. That was right around the time this card was printed, which tells us that Crawford was one of less than a dozen AL players with over 50 stolen bases, 50 extra-base hits (including 19 triples), and 100 runs scored in a single season. Decades from now, if the game continues to be more power-focused, Crawford's name might come up as one of the last great base stealers with power. Dee Gordon has the speed, but nowhere near the same power. Even over the course of one man's career, the game can change quite a bit.

2005 Fleer Showcase Swing Time #7 Todd Helton

I didn't get any Rockies base cards from '05 Showcase, but I did end up with a hit in this insert of Todd Helton. The angles on this card don't look that different from 2017 Topps, just shifted a bit. It's just about as thick as the base cards, and has that sturdy feel of a premium set. I'm not sure why Fleer felt the need to work the numbers "97" into the Swing Time lettering, but it looks odd, and even more so on the back, where the "N" is written in the preschool-backwards style.

That back uses the same angles, the same noticeable triangle in the center, and the same photo, which is slightly more zoomed in. The upper area has the same partial opacity, which means that Todd Helton's throat is the only area of the photograph that isn't obscured by the design or the paragraph. Stadium Club this is not.

In fact, I think this card helps me understand why so many of you dislike 2017 Topps. The sharp angles detract from the photograph, and just seem to force a lot of odd shapes. Shifting this all to the left a bit wouldn't really help much. But a hit is a hit, and seeing a pre-goatee Todd Helton brings about a sense of nostalgia.

2016 Topps Chrome Pink Refractors #59 Tom Murphy (RC)

Colbey was nice enough to throw in a recent Topps Chrome parallel in addition to the haul from this Fleer group break. Tom Murphy showed up in my last post on another 2016 Topps product, and they both get the Rookie Card logo. As with most Chrome cards, there's a little bit of a curl, but that's expected at this point. This time, the Pink parallel does not get a serial number, but it is a refractor. Topps does not label it as such, but if the light is right, it's easy to tell.

It's surprising how much sharper this photo looks compared to just a decade or so prior. That could have a bit to do with the camera technology, but cards have come a long way since Fleer's relatively recent demise.

Thanks to Colbey for running this group break way back in August, when the thermometer read a wee bit more than 14 degrees Fahrenheit. I hope you all have a healthy and fulfilling 2018, and remember that Opening Day is less than three months away!