This Is 40

In my previous post, I mentioned the occasion of reaching my 10th blog anniversary. What I didn't point out is that I had not quite turned thirty when I clicked "Publish" for the very first time. A glance at the yearly archives list and a simple bit of math will lead you to the conclusion that I recently hit the big 4-0.

Another trip around the sun means my mom checked my Eight Men Out list again, and a few more cards found their way to me.

1996 Zenith Mozaics #12 Andrés Galarraga / Dante Bichette / Larry Walker

Leading off today is a shiny (Dufex, in fact) card of a trio of Blake Street Bombers. Arranged in a vaguely stained-glass collage style, the 25-card Mozaics insert set from 1996 Zenith combined three teammates per card. Featured for the Rockies, and referred to only by first name on the card back, were Andrés Galarraga, Dante Bichette, and Larry Walker. I'm pretty sure that's Eric Young, Sr. making a cameo in the Galarraga frame, and the design is embellished with a few assorted baseball equipment items, and lots and lots of gold capital letters.

It's a busy card. It looks like the smallest-ever scrapbook page. Note that "Mozaics" is deliberately misspelled with a "z" for "Zenith", because we did things like that in the '90s.

I'm not sure where I first saw this set. It might have been on one of Nachos Grande's group breaks, which is my primary connection to the hobby these days. But I knew it would be a great collectible right from the jump. (Update: it was this post from Mario.)

1994 Topps Gold #396 Jeff Bronkey

Continuing my ongoing quest to complete the Topps Gold checklist replacement cards printed from 1992-1994, here's the third such card to enter my collection from the 1994 Gold set. It features the only MLB player born in Afghanistan, Jeff Bronkey. This fact was mentioned on the card back, and remains true today. He briefly played in three seasons for the Rangers and Brewers, earning two saves in his short career.

Topps managed to shrink the typeface enough in 1994 to get the checklists onto only two cards per series, down from three each series in 1993. That means I only need one more to complete the 1994 run of these rarely-seen parallels.

2020 Topps National Baseball Card Day #10 Nolan Arenado

As the seasons continue on, the memory of Nolan Arenado as a Rockie feels more and more distant. While his time in St. Louis hasn't been as strong as hoped, his absence from 20th and Blake is striking. 

Occupying the same #10 in the checklist as he did in 2019, this card celebrating National Baseball Card Day 2020 featured Nolan and his fifth straight season with 35 home runs and 110 RBIs. That sustained performance was an "unprecedented" feat for a third baseman, a word that got far too much usage in 2020.

Though it's a 2020 card, the photo itself dates from 2019, as we can tell from two pieces of evidence. First, the MLB 150 patch on Arenado's right sleeve, worn league-wide throughout the 2019 season. Second, actual fans are in the seats.

Of the three cards Mom gave me for my birthday, this one was all her doing, and she picked well. She always does.

1984 Topps #750 Jim Palmer (AU)

The birthday festivities don't end there, though.

My new father-in-law is another guy I can count on, as he's been giving me autographs for years. My in-laws took us out to lunch at a nearby pizza spot, and there he added to my collection with this autograph of Jim Palmer on a 1984 Topps card. The card itself is a new addition, as is Palmer's autograph to my much more limited autograph collection. 

I always like how Hall of Famers sign with their year of induction, in Palmer's case 1990. He and Joe Morgan were the two inductees that year, both on their first ballot.

In 1984, Palmer was fresh off his third and final World Series championship, appearing in a few games before seeing his long and storied career reach an end. No one printed a card for him in 1985, so this is the closest he came to getting a true sunset card.

2024 Topps NOW #39 Ryan McMahon /888

My birthday doesn't quite stretch out to Opening Day, but spring training is always well underway by the time I blow out the candles. It's a fun time of year. Only a few weeks later, we were together again at the Rockies home opener, thanks to his longtime coworker Dianna.

It's a fun tradition, especially when the beers are flowing long before first pitch. And despite an extremely disappointing top of the 9th, I was there to see Ryan McMahon win it for the Rockies with a walkoff grand slam in the bottom of that same frame, and 888 buyers, myself included, decided they wanted to see this moment on a Topps Now baseball card.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, the card back doesn't have a paragraph, just a photo of Charlie Blackmon pouring out the sports drink cooler all over McMahon. RyMac, as he's known, has been one of the few bright spots of what has thus far been a pretty dismal Rockies season.

In the past decade, while there have been tears, loss, frustration, and grief, more often than not I've been the beneficiary of great strokes of luck and good fortune, and this little baseball card blog is just the tiniest part of it. My collection has grown, yes, but my life has grown in immeasurable ways. The simple fact that people in my life continue to show their appreciation in ways ranging from these little rectangular pieces of cardboard to acts of unforgettable generosity must mean that I've been doing something right these past 40 years.

 

Opening Day Is Upon Us (Part 1: Base)

At long last, the 2022 MLB season has begun. The lockout, while it did delay Opening Day by a week or so, was ended early enough to salvage a full season. Baseball is back, though not without some notable changes.

The National League, nearly a half-century after the American League made the switch, is now using a Designated Hitter, although MLB carefully carved out some exceptions so as not to diminish Shohei Ohtani's unique strengths. The extra innings ghost runner rule is still intact. Playoffs have expanded to 12 teams, further eroding the value of playing a 162-game schedule. The TV streaming landscape continues to grow ever-more fragmented, and umpires are finally using the stadium PA system to explain reviewed calls. 

But in speaking with more casual baseball fans in my circle, the thing I've been asked about the most (once they learn that the lockout is over, that is), is the electronic pitch-calling system that a few teams tested during spring training. After what happened with the Astros in 2017, the system for catchers calling pitches was definitely due for an upgrade. Teams throughout the league now have the option of using the new PitchCom system, a button-operated device worn by the catcher that audibly communicates the selected pitch to up to five players over an encrypted radio channel. As baseball changes go, it's been pretty well-received.

The game has changed a lot in the past few years, not to mention in the past century.

2022 Topps Opening Day #76 Eloy Jiménez

On the other hand, the game hasn't changed so much that it's lost its roots. The 1919-esque Field of Dreams game that took place last summer still has its place. And Topps picked a few photos from that evening's event for 2022 base cards (and thus the quasi-parallels of the Opening Day set). Eloy Jiménez, one of the stars of a young White Sox team, is pictured here in the throwback Sox uniforms worn by the team that night in Dyersville, Iowa. It's been jazzed up a little bit with modern touches like the Nike Swoosh, gold chains, and the helmet C-Flap, a piece of safety equipment that saved Francisco Lindor from a serious injury on Friday night.

As we approach Easter, it's worth telling an amusing story about Eloy Jiménez. Late in spring training last year, he suffered a tendon injury and was projected to miss several months. Of course that was unfortunate, but the White Sox tweeted about it in such a way (granted, on April Fools' Day) that made it sound like he had died. After plenty of misunderstanding among the fan base, everyone started joking "He is risen" upon his earlier-than-expected return last summer, which came in plenty of time for him to emerge like an apparition from the outfield corn in Iowa.

2022 Topps Opening Day #120 Carlos Rodón

In flipping through the surprisingly massive quantity of cards that came out of a single blaster (including not one, but two "Extra Packs"), I noticed just how many different uniforms the White Sox wore last year. Another throwback worn by pitcher Carlos Rodón is, um, thrown back but not as far, bringing us back to the early-mid 1980s. There sure is a lot of red on the sock for a team called the White Sox.

Rodón, who pitched a no-hitter just under one year ago, has an "MR" memorial patch on the right sleeve of his uniform, something we'll see lots of throughout this post. The MR initials are for Martyl Reinsdorf, wife of White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. She passed away in June 2021.

2022 Topps Opening Day #192 Lance Lynn

Of course, the White Sox often wore their normal black and white pinstriped uniforms too, but that's less interesting, so let's move on while pitcher Lance Lynn recovers from knee surgery.

2022 Topps Opening Day #194 José Abreu

That brings us to José Abreu, the MVP veteran of the White Sox, sporting the team's special City Connect uniform. By the end of 2022, about half the teams will have partnered with Nike to create these unique City Connect uniforms, meant to "explore the personality, values, and customs that make each community and their residents unique", according to the press release. The White Sox, as you can see, have all-black uniforms with white pinstripes, and "Southside" lettering across the front, tying them into their particular area of Chicago.

2022 Topps Opening Day #147 Nico Hoerner

Contrast that with their crosstown rivals, the Cubs, whose dark blue City Connect uniforms have "Wrigleyville" lettering. A mere eleven miles away up Lake Shore Drive, the Cubs have their own section of Chicago firmly locked up, and are next in line to play in Iowa for their own Field of Dreams game this August 11th.

2022 Topps Opening Day #98 Trevor Rogers

The Marlins debuted their own City Connect uniforms in 2021, featuring "Miami" in script lettering on a red background, along with a blue cap. These are the colors once worn by a Cuban-based Minor League team, the Havana Sugar Kings. That team's history came to a sudden end around the time of the Cuban Revolution, although they eventually evolved into the franchise that is today's Triple-A Norfolk Tides.

Even the patch worn on Trevor Rogers's right sleeve is a near-replica of the original Sugar Kings logo, slightly altered to include the Marlins name. The Sugar Kings may not be around anymore, but the Cuban connection in Miami very much is.

I'll always have a fondness for the turquoise uniforms the Marlins debuted with in their inaugural 1993 season, but these are pretty cool.

2022 Topps Opening Day #129 Max Scherzer

The Dodgers debuted their "Los Dodgers" jerseys in L.A. last summer, but this one wasn't as well-received among fans. It's a nice shade of blue, but isn't especially different from the team's usual uniform. Max Scherzer isn't even a Dodger anymore anyway. He's with the Mets now, and I find it surprising that neither New York team has been involved in this program yet. The Yankee pinstripes are timeless, but surely the Mets could come up with something.

2022 Topps Opening Day #86 Mike Yastrzemski

Think of San Francisco, and you'll probably think of the Golden Gate Bridge. The designers of Mike Yastrzemski's alternate Giants uniform thought the same thing. They added what's meant to be a layer of fog on the all-white uniforms, and even a white gradient on the bottom of the "G", as though the logo is emerging from the fog the way the bridge towers do.

As a tech worker, the bridge design on the sleeves remind me of older Cisco logos.

The Red Sox and Diamondbacks got in on the City Connect fun last year, but I didn't find any such cards of theirs in this blaster. Several more teams this year, including the Rockies on June 4th, will have a new alternate jersey in the series with which to take the field.

I have to admit that these kind of flew under my radar last year. I had seen them on highlight reels, but didn't really put together how inspired and creative these were meant to be. I'm excited to see more teams have their City Connect jerseys unveiled throughout the season. I've made it a point to put this year's release dates on my calendar, since clearly I'm into it. I've spent eight cards talking about little else but uniforms, and there's more where that came from.

2022 Topps Opening Day #166 Ernie Clement (RC)

This is a Photoshop job, but it is our first look at Cleveland's new team name and logo, the Guardians. Unfortunately, they lost their first game under the new banner. 

I don't have much to say about rookie Ernie Clement, but I haven't said anything about the 2022 design yet, so here goes. 

I like it.

It doesn't seem quite as much like a Bowman design as I first thought. I particularly like how the red line around the outer border swoops around and curves through the stitches of the baseball design element in the lower left. The team name and especially the position are pretty tiny and hard to read, but the size of the player's name is a huge improvement over the 2021 set, as are the photographs. 

I do see how collectors are calling this the "wrench set" based on the lower design elements, but I don't see a wrench as vividly as I see the so-called sea turtle in 2013 Topps, at least not when the border is color-coded for a red team. Maybe it's a little more noticeable with a white border. The colored border carries over to the back, but the baseball stitch loop area is only halfway there. Where the other half would be is occupied by the card number.

2022 Topps Opening Day #219 Freddie Freeman

Not counting something like Topps Update, the photos we get on baseball cards are typically one season behind. Printing technology has improved by leaps and bounds since I started collecting (really, go back and look at the photo quality on late-80s Donruss sets), but the constraints of creating, printing, and distributing baseball card sets have only gotten more challenging. We've only had Topps Now for a handful of years, and keep in mind you've never been able to buy that by the box.

I'm not expecting a current-year photo of Freddie Freeman on this card. That would be silly; the season is only a few days old. I'm just using that as a segue to point out the commemorative patch from 2021 on Freeman's sleeve, the 150th Anniversary of the Braves franchise. They can trace their lineage all the way back to 1871's Boston Red Stockings, which predated the National League itself by five years.

I happened to get a good look at Freeman on Friday when his new team, the Dodgers, visited Coors Field for Opening Day. Yes, some Opening Day tickets came my way this year, and it was a fun experience to be back at the ballpark, but the Dodgers sort of spoiled the fun. Their entire lineup is just one MVP after another, with some All-Stars peppered in there for good measure.

2022 Topps Opening Day #94 Adam Wainwright

Adam Wainwright's stellar career is likely drawing to a close this season, along with that of his longtime battery mate, Yadier Molina. That's probably just who is ready to catch the pitch that Waino is winding up for on this photo.

Many of the Hall of Fame legends we lost in the past couple years were honored with memorial patches during the 2021 season. Bob Gibson and his #45...

2022 Topps Opening Day #174 Christian Yelich

...Hank Aaron and his #44 (though he was only briefly a Brewer)...

2022 Topps Opening Day #65 Julio Urías

...Tommy Lasorda's #2 and Don Sutton's #20...

2022 Topps Opening Day #5 Joey Gallo

...Whitey Ford's #16...

2022 Topps Opening Day #168 Josh Donaldson

...Mike Bell's initials, the bench coach of the Twins...

2022 Topps Opening Day #191 Pete Alonso

...and Tom Seaver's #41.

It's sad, that much loss. But it's always a nice gesture when teams honor their great legends. 

Seaver's number is being worn by Pete Alonso, one of the exciting young stars whose name isn't mentioned nearly as much as Tatís, Guerrero, Soto, Acuña, and others. He was the 2019 NL Rookie of the Year and has two consecutive wins at the Home Run Derby. Alonso, aka Polar Bear, is a few years older than those vibrant young players, but I think he's a bit underrated.

The card back mentions the whopping 74 home runs he hit at the 2021 Home Run Derby. He's likely to get plenty more great horizontal cards in future Topps sets if he keeps that up.

2022 Topps Opening Day #82 Manny Machado

I really am not a fan of Manny Machado, but I have to admit that this a fantastic card. The cropping and pose is great, and the "wrench" design works especially well in horizontal orientation. I even noticed the tiny white dot between the team logo and the player's name, which I didn't spot on the vertical cards.

2022 Topps Opening Day #38 Byron Buxton

Many of the best defensive plays, which I have a special appreciation for thanks to my Nolan Arenado fandom, really can't be depicted any other way than horizontally. Byron Buxton, now a Twin for the next seven years, shows us exactly why. 

Home run robberies, on the other hand, would typically need a more traditional vertical orientation. 

We've been seeing cards like these for a long time, but I have to wonder what a collector from fifty years ago would think, someone who had just started seeing "In Action" photos appear on baseball cards. We look back fondly on various baserunning and play-at-the-plate cards from that era and still write about them today. Will we still be talking about Byron Buxton cards in the year 2072?

I can't promise this blog will go on that long, despite my best efforts.

2022 Topps Opening Day #169 Ryan McMahon

Only a couple Rockies were present in this blaster, chock full of over 150 cards. Ryan McMahon was the first among them, and he's holding down the starting third baseman job for the Rockies even after the team signed Kris Bryant, who is now apparently a left fielder. I never expected this Stadium Club insert from several years ago would end up being related to an eventual Rockies player, but I'm glad I held onto it. Bryant had a chance to tie the game on Opening Day in the 9th inning, but foul tipped the last pitch for a strikeout.

Clearly he is the big news in Denver this year, other than Russell Wilson joining the Broncos, who traveled a couple miles east to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day. All I'm talking about is Bryant in relation to RyMac's card. But McMahon is growing into one of the fan favorites around here, and he had an RBI and a double in Saturday's night game. Perhaps the All-Star Game patch on his sleeve is a sign for the future of his career.

2022 Topps Opening Day #177 Trevor Story

Trevor Story, on the other hand, couldn't get out of here fast enough. He signed a deal with the Red Sox, and he's playing second base instead of his usual shortstop, a position that is currently occupied by Xander Bogaerts. As I understand it, the Rockies offered him more money than did Boston, but he still decided to venture out elsewhere.

Whatever happens now, at least us Rockies fans had six seasons of electrifying performance and monster home runs from Trevor Story to look back on. I don't know what it was, but somehow his homers just felt like they were bigger, even if they often traveled roughly the same distance as many others. He was a lot of fun to watch, and I wish him well.

2022 Topps Opening Day #199 Trent Grisham

Trent Grisham is one of the very few players in the MLB who chooses not to wear batting gloves, but the main reason this Padres card caught my eye is that it's obviously a candidate for my Coors Field frankenset. That much purple, especially in and on the dugout, makes it hard to mistake for anything else. Plus, as a player in the NL West, he's much more likely to play in Coors Field during a road game.

2022 Topps Opening Day #208 Wander Franco (RC)

And finally, this wouldn't be a proper post about a 2022 baseball card set if I didn't mention Wander Franco, this year's red-hot rookie whose cards are currently going for eye-popping prices. I'll end up with his Topps Series 1 rookie card later on once I buy the factory set, but the nearly-identical Opening Day version will hold me over until then.

The season is barely underway and I've already seen this card countless times, enough to notice that between the Topps Rookie Cup and the Opening Day logo, the design elements at all four corners of the photo are nicely symmetrical. That symmetry is slightly thrown off on his Series 1 base card since there's nothing in the lower right.

This post was twenty-two cards, possibly a record for me. And this is just part one. Come back later for the Mariner Moose (yes, I did get the Mariner Moose because of course I did) and the rest of the inserts in part two.

The Trading Post #126: A Cracked Bat (Part 2: Not as Shiny)

As we saw in Part 1, I have a strong affinity for shiny cards, but regular cards, including those dripping with gold foil, have a place in my collection too. That brings us to Part 2 of a recent shipment from Julie at A Cracked Bat, featuring cards printed on regular card stock but no less awesome or less new to my collection.

2017 Topps Bunt Vapor #V-CG Carlos Gonzalez

I purchased some 2017 Topps BUNT when it was for sale at Target, but I didn't manage to pull any cards as rare as this purple Vapor insert of Carlos Gonzalez. It's numbered to /99 right on the front, and shares equal scarcity with inserts featuring two other background designs, Splatter and Galaxy.

I still have the BUNT app on my iPhone, but I haven't opened it in months. Like most of the BUNT set, this card ties in to the digital app, as the back includes a scratch-off area with a code to redeem a digital version within the app itself. Unfortunately, Topps didn't give collectors much time to do that, as the unscratched code expired in December 2017.

Luckily, in case you missed that short deadline, Topps included a paragraph to keep detail-oriented collectors like me happy. We're told about how CarGo closed out May 2012, which included a game with three home runs, followed the day after with a shot in the first inning. That feat has totally slipped under the radar, and all because he had a night of rest. He'd be immortalized in baseball history with Scooter Gennett and Mark Whiten if he had hit all four of those in a single game.

2017 Topps Fire #175 Nolan Arenado

Those BUNT inserts could easily be confused with Topps Fire, but Fire went a little bit more over the top. This trade package as a whole represented my first-ever look at the set, and here's an example of a base card after the couple parallels and inserts from Part 1. The little light spots all over the card are supposed to be sparks rising in a column of smoke, but they look a little more like a starfield to me, giving this card a very sci-fi look. Maybe something out of one of the Thor movies.

Topps also went with a selective color look here, desaturating Nolan Arenado's skin tones while leaving his purple uniform intact. They also left the 2017 Spring Training patch on his right sleeve alone, the burnt orange of the Arizona desert distracting a little bit from every possible Rockies color.

2018 Topps Fire #164 Charlie Blackmon

We'll see plenty more of Nolan later, but here's how Topps Fire evolved with the 2018 set. I still have a pretty small sample size with Topps Fire, so I'm not sure how much the card backgrounds vary from card to card. The few I've seen each look pretty unique, though. If you ask me, they look a lot like recent Diamond Kings, especially the Aurora inserts. Charlie's beard is as wild as the background, and Topps gave us a little more right-sleeve patch action, this time with the Rockies' 25th Anniversary patch.

Along with teammate David Dahl, Blackmon got hitched after the 2018 season concluded (no, not to each other), and Dahl and Blackmon will be the starting corner infielders this year, as the Rockies appear not to be pursuing Carlos Gonzalez in free agency. That will give Ian Desmond responsibility in center field. He does have experience in position #8, but not in an outfield as large as Coors Field's. He's been a disappointment at the plate, so hopefully he can turn things around. Seeing Ian Desmond and Daniel Murphy coming in to basically replace CarGo and DJ LeMahieu will take some getting used to.

1996 Donruss Press Proofs #224 Dante Bichette /2000

Dante Bichette was always more of a corner outfield guy himself, but he did play center on occasion. The "loincloth" design element of 1996 Donruss lists him as a Left Fielder. It's an excellent bat rack shot, and you might notice the overall design has a little more gold tint than usual. That's because it's a Press Proof parallel, as noted vertically on the right. That little rectangular medallion in the center gives us the print run of "1st 2,000 Printed", although there is not an actual serial number. It's a rarely-seen variety, and my first example from the 1996 set. I have a couple from 1995, which have appeared on the blog before.

This is a great addition to my collection, and as it turns out, I don't seem to even have the base variety. It will be one of the easier rainbows to complete, as this and the base card are the only two types out there. To find a card that's as rare as a Stadium Club First Day Issue before the regular one seems pretty unusual, especially from a set printed shortly after the overproduction bubble collapsed.

1996 Pacific Gold Crown Die Cuts #DC-29 Dante Bichette

Pacific gave us a similar take on Dante Bichette in 1996, choosing to highlight some of the same stats on the card back as Donruss did, primarily his league-leading stats in home runs and RBIs, and his solid batting average of .340, way above his usual .310. It wasn't quite enough for the Triple Crown, as Mike Piazza was a few points ahead (Piazza was always ruining things for Bichette), and of course Tony Gwynn was heads and shoulders above everyone, way up at .368.

Pacific had it right; it truly was Bichette's "finest season as a pro", and he never eclipsed those numbers. He even came pretty close to the MVP that year, just being edged out by Barry Larkin.

Of course, with Pacific we can always count on some unusual designs, such as this massive die-cut gold crown, which distracts us from the nearly identical photograph they used two years later in 1998 Paramount. It's not the same image, as Bichette is a little later in his follow-through on this one, and 1997's Jackie Robinson patch is nowhere to be found, but that same WGN logo at Wrigley field is peeking in on the lower right.

Sadly, 2019 will be the final year the Cubbies will be broadcast on WGN. They're starting up a new regional sports network in 2020, to be known as Marquee. In their perpetual short-sightedness, the league and the teams are alienating their local fans, especially those wanting nothing to do with cable TV. Cubs day games being broadcast on WGN, which was once in an affordable basic-cable tier, allowed many of us young fans to watch games after school, and is probably why there are Cubs fans everywhere.

I've written about this before, and I think in this day and age when attention is more and more valuable, locking your content behind a paywall with ever-increasing fees is going to force plenty of people to simply look elsewhere. I've even heard marketing pundits compare it to boxing. It's not that boxing is gone, but it's not a thing that everyone listens to on the radio like they did in the 1930s. And if there is another strike in 2021, MLB is going to have an awful time trying to get those fans back.

Anyway, that's enough pontificating about media distribution for now. The whole point of this blog is to pontificate about baseball cards.

1996 Pacific Estrellas Latinas #EL-11 Andres Galarraga

Julie found another one from Pacific's Estrellas Latinas insert set to go along with Vinny Castilla's card that arrived just a few posts ago. That's a complete team set from this 36-card insert set. Granted, it's just two cards, but that's not bad for a set I had no idea even existed a few months ago.

Now that I have two to compare, it's clear that the gold pattern in the background is identical across the whole set. The card back has the Spanish paragraph with an English translation as usual with Pacific, which means we get to see Andres Galarraga's nickname in two languages, "el Gato Grande" and "The Big Cat". We're also told he stole 12 bases in 1995, not something one would expect for someone with a nickname like that.

2015 Topps Mini Black #442 Tyler Matzek /10

Tyler Matzek was found throughout Topps sets for a while, but he's completely fallen off the radar, as he hasn't pitched in the Majors since 2015. The back paragraph refers to him as a "one-time Minor League 'wild man'", so maybe those tendencies crept back in. Still, he also got a card in 2015 Topps, which means he got a card in 2015 Topps Mini, along with all its extra-rare parallels. This Black parallel is numbered to a mere 10 copies.

If you can believe it, this isn't even the rarest card Julie has ever sent me. I once received a 2014 Stadium Club Members Only parallel from her. It's a bit of a guessing game on those but there are probably just seven out there. Short of just sending me a printing plate, that's about as rare as it gets.

The 2015 flagship design will be remembered for being a bridge between the solid-color borders Topps used throughout their history and the quasi-full-bleed designs we have today. Night Owl ranked it at the very top of this decade's designs, and it's definitely memorable.

2018 Topps Gypsy Queen #65 Trevor Story

Topps has finally decided that "Gypsy Queen" takes up too much space on a design, so they just shortened it to GQ. They did this on autograph cards last year, and the change has now arrived on the main set. I don't think I've ever bought a pack of the stuff, yet I am pretty sure I have something from every year it's been out. 2018's design is a bit more modern-looking than some past years, and I actually like this quite a bit. I particularly like the photo of Trevor Story flinging a ball toward first base while nonchalantly blowing a bubble. That's how routine it is for him.

Not even a retro design like Gypsy Queen is immune to Sabermetrics, as the card back mentions that Story had 11 Defensive Runs Saved last season, tops for NL shortstops. That paragraph resides above a little gold-colored plaque with the Gypsy Queen name in it.

2018 Topps '83 Topps Blue #83-76 Ryan McMahon

Story has a locked-in starting gig, but Ryan McMahon's future with the Rockies is uncertain. He'll probably be a utility player for some time to come, and he's got some big shoes to fill if he wants to play on the right side of the diamond with some big names ahead of him. In fact, the Rockies recently signed Mark Reynolds to a Minor League deal, and he has plenty of experience playing first base at Coors. The young prospect, though he looks good on this 1983 design, has his work cut out for him.

2018 marked the 35th anniversary of the '83 design, and Topps honored it with a 100-card insert set featuring current and retired players, along with the usual slew of colored parallels. This is obviously the blue one. It's the continuation of the 30th Anniversary 1987 cards printed in 2017. Julie has sent me those, too. I still haven't purchased any, but Topps is using the 1984 design on their Anniversary cards this year.

Speaking of, I'm just a few weeks away from my own 35th Anniversary, so to speak. I was born the same year Don Mattingly's rookie card was leaving the Topps factories.

2018 Topps MLB Awards #MLBA-23 Nolan Arenado

Half the size of the '83 Anniversary set, Topps put out a 50-card MLB Awards insert set to honor 2017's top performers. To no one's surprise, including Topps', Nolan Arenado added another Gold Glove to his trophy case. At the time, it was his fifth, and he won a sixth for his 2018 campaign. As Topps says, "there's little drama associated with the announcement". His Defensive Runs Saved count reached 20, and he was credited with 57 completely subjective "Good Fielding Plays".

The design is a bit unnecessarily busy, but the photo selection is appropriate for a defense-focused card of maybe the best defender in the game right now.

2018 Score #13 Nolan Arenado

He's great at the plate, too. Panini recognized that, and added Nolan to the 2018 Score set, yet another of the many legacy Pinnacle brands they have resurrected. They took a page from 1989 Fleer and many others in editing the bat to extend outside the frame, and we can also see soon-to-be center fielder Ian Desmond in the on-deck circle.

I'm a little disappointed, because if there's one thing I associate with Score, it's the novel-length write-ups found on the card backs. This one has a bit about his rate of home runs per at bat, massively higher than the average big-leaguer, especially with runners in scoring position.

Someday I will read all my old Score cards. I can only imagine the gems hiding in there. For example, I just learned that Jim Clancy, #424 in the 1990 Score set and then an Astro, was the first Blue Jay to reach 100 wins with the club. He remains third on the all-time Jays win list, behind Dave Steib and Roy Halladay. Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, no Rockie pitcher has reached that milestone yet. The current leader is Jorge De La Rosa, with 86.

1990 Score #424 Jim Clancy (Reverse)

That's what a Score card should look like. Yes, I realize that Clancy's write-up is shorter than most, but that's because Score included his complete career stats, something Topps did for the 2019 set to everyone's appreciation.

2018 Panini Chronicles #35 Nolan Arenado

By the way, that Score card isn't actually a main set. It's a 30-card insert set for this one, 2018 Panini Chronicles. Like the Score insert, it uses the same photo front and back, although we do get a different write up on the base card. Nolan doesn't just rack up Gold Gloves, but also Silver Sluggers, and he's becoming so feared a hitter that the number of walks he's drawn has been increasing steadily, as this card tell us.

If I collected other sports, I'd probably know Panini's lineup better. After all, they have the exclusive license for both the NBA and NFL. Baseball seems like it's getting more niche all the time, and Panini has the licenses for both the most popular sports league in the USA, and also the one with the best-known players. Not a single MLB player is on ESPN's 100 most famous athletes, not even the generational superstars like Mike Trout, or the flashy crowd-pleasers like Yasiel Puig.

2018 Topps Heritage New Age Performers #NAP-14 Nolan Arenado

Topps has kept the New Age Performer insert set going with Heritage for a while, usually offering some funky hippie fonts to take us back to the late 1960s. When I saw this card, I thought of another particular card of his that I thought was a New Age Performer, but it was actually something from Topps Archives.

2018 Topps Archives #66 Wade Davis

There are a couple pages of 2008 Heritage in my collection, and a real 1959 Topps Robin Roberts card, my first-ever vintage card, so I am a little familiar with this design. At first glance, I thought it was Heritage, but Wade Davis hadn't quite hit the big leagues in '08. So that leaves Topps Archives again, and they changed the card stock just enough where I can't pick it out by feel anymore.

This marks Wade Davis' first appearance on the blog. He was a bit shaky in his closer role, something I witnessed firsthand in 2018, but he still led the NL with 43 saves. He was a "door-slamming fireman" more often than not, but six blown saves is not great. We'll see if he can stay atop the NL leaderboard in 2019.

1994 Fleer Extra Bases #246 Greg Harris

The final cards of this post are from yet another new-to-me set, the oversized Fleer Extra Bases. It's a monster 400-card set that I never knew existed, and I have no idea how you'd store that many cards like this. The width is exactly what we're used to, but they're about an inch taller. I guess it would fit in 9-pocket pages if you just leave the top row empty and use 50% more pages.

The aspect ratio allows for some unique cropping, but I am pretty sure there are no horizontal cards to be found. The usual Rockies of the inaugural era turned up, as well as Greg Harris, who is also making his debut on Infield Fly Rule. This gentleman is Greg W. Harris, not to be confused with his ambidextrous contemporary, Greg A. Harris, who played for Boston at the time.

Fleer tells us that Harris "has the ability to be one of the Rockies' top pitchers." That may have been true, but Harris did not fare well in two seasons with the Rockies. He went 1-8 in 1993, and technically improved his win percentage in 1994 by going 3-12. His career ended a year later, his career cut short by a botched surgery, but he ended up winning a lawsuit against his doctor. Quite the crazy story.

He became a Rockie via a trade with the Padres, who also sent Bruce Hurst to the Rockies. Hopes were high, but Hurst's best years were behind him. He only appeared in three games as a Rockie, and he was one of many players whose careers ended with the 1994 strike.

This has gone down as the worst trade in Rockies history, as they shipped Brad Ausmus, Doug Bochtler, and Andy Ashby off to San Diego. Believe it or not, Ashby was the PTBNL in this one.

At least they got it out of the way early.

1994 Fleer Extra Bases Second Year Stars #15 David Nied

We'll close with another chapter in Rockies pitching busts, the first overall pick in the Rockies/Marlins expansion draft, David Nied. Rumor has it that the Atlanta Braves chose to protect Deion Sanders over Nied in the draft, but they were none too happy with Neon Deion after he split time between the Braves and NFL's Atlanta Falcons during the 1992 Postseason. The latest episode of 30 for 30 tells that story brilliantly.

Anyway, the Rockies have had problems with pitching literally since day one. That reality has changed, and the perception is starting to change, as well. But despite what Fleer says, Nied didn't turn out to be a Second Year Star. Elsewhere in this 20-card insert set, you'll find a few Marlins from the expansion draft, including Jeff Conine and Trevor Hoffman. Also in that set are Mike Piazza, Pedro Martinez, and Tim Salmon. Nied is the lone Rockie.

It's a good design, though, and you can find this filmstrip theme in various Stadium Club inserts. The four images on the left aren't actually any different. Rather, they're just progressively zoomed-in. It looks similar on the back, but with a slant.

Julie included lots of the Blake Street Bomber guys with this stack of Extra Bases cards, but based on who I got in the insert set, I chose to take a darker path and get a feel for how bumpy the pitching really was in those early days.

Some of these sets are so new I just haven't had a chance to buy them yet. But Julie has some sort of magic way of unearthing surprises even for this seasoned collector.