The Trading Post #159: The Collector (Part 2: Not Topps)

The majority of what I found in a box that was sent to me from The Collector consisted of non-Topps products. Part 1 had all those Topps products, and here in part two we have Fleer, Upper Deck, and even a little Pacific. I particularly enjoy when cards tend to fall into nice pairings, like they did in one of Nick's trades last month. That will happen here once again.

Category 1: Score Gold Rush

1994 Score Gold Rush #336 Alex Cole

After more than 300 posts, surely I've shown at least a couple thousand cards by now. Because of that, I generally check my past posts to ensure I haven't scanned a card before. This Alex Cole card is new, but I'm surprised at how often I've seen 1994 Score Gold Rush. Score was one of many brands in a crowded pre-Strike marketplace, but they were affordable and thus quite common. Their one-per-pack Gold Rush parallels took full advantage of the foil craze that was going on in the early 1990s, and they're really quite stunning. The downside is that the foil has a tendency to peel slightly, and unlike every late-'90s Topps Finest card I own, that's not something I'd like to see happen here.

Alex Cole, an outfielder, was known for wearing goggles like these in the field. You can see them on pretty much all of his cards, but I never saw a close-up so clear that you could tell the brand. I'm no sunglasses expert, and I've never heard of Cazal before, but this German brand is still out there.

This being Score, there's a lengthy write-up on the back, which tells us that he joined the Rockies in the 1992 Expansion Draft, that he platooned with Chris Jones in 1993, and that he had never hit a home run in MLB. He signed with the Twins for the 1994 season, and hit five home runs for them over the two shortened seasons of 1994 and 1995. The center fielder was definitely more of a speed guy, swiping 148 bags in his career.

1995 Score Gold Rush #588 Jayhawk Owens

Gold Rush was carried over for 1995, and unlike the base cards which have a bunch of green dots in the design, the Rookie subset uses a very thick black border. The last time I showed a card of Jayhawk Owens, or simply "J." as he prefers it, it was from 1993 Topps Gold, the set that Gold Rush was obviously created to compete with. 

Even though he's in this subset, Owens wasn't really a rookie at this point. He had playing time in both 1993 and 1994, and ended up playing 130 games over his four seasons with the Rockies. He, too, joined the Rockies via the Expansion Draft, and wound up with eleven career homers.

Category 2: Inaugural Rockies Pitchers

1997 Circa #360 Steve Reed

Since we've already seen two players who were among the first-ever Rockies, here are a couple more who shared the field, or even a battery, with the guys from Score Gold Rush. First up is Steve Reed, appearing on 1997 Circa, one of many Fleer/Skybox brands with a very loud design. In addition to these in-your-face graphics, Fleer put a quote from Reed right on the front. He says, "You can score as many runs as you want here [Coors Field], and it still might not be enough unless you have a pitcher who can go in and stop the bleeding."

Wise words from someone in a position to know. He suffered a lot of blown saves in pre-humidor Coors, but ended up with quite a few wins on the other side of it. I harp on this statistic a lot, but he had 33 wins as a Rockie despite never starting a game. The card back mentions his 22 holds (presumably in 1996), a statistic that refers to entering a save situation while preserving the lead for the next pitcher. Set-up men earn a lot of these. Scot Shields, who set up for Francisco Rodríguez on the Angels, had a ton of them. It's sort of related to what we might call a "high-leverage situation" today. 

The only problem on the card back is that Steve Reed isn't pictured at all.

1997 Circa #360 Steve Reed (Reverse)

I'm pretty sure that's Kevin Ritz, a starter. Reed's trademark mustache is missing, and that's clearly a "T" on the back of this pitcher's uniform.

1997 Score Premium Stock #204 Armando Reynoso

Another pitcher that handed off to Steve Reed in the early days of the Rockies was Armando Reynoso. For 1997, Score omitted a photo on the card back to leave lots of room for various statistical breakdowns and splits, the Pinnacle authenticator box, and the usual novella you find on Score cards. This one lists out all six pitches in his arsenal. There are two types of curveballs, the usual fastball/slider/change-up combo, and even a forkball, the forgotten cousin of the split-fingered fastball which pretty much no one throws anymore. They also mention his masterful pickoff move.

I picked this card as a comparison to Bruce Ruffin's card from last week so you could see the difference between the Series 1 and Series 2 versions of 1997 Score parallels. Ruffin's card was from the Series 2 Reserve Collection, while this is the Series 1 Premium Stock. It's the same base set, just different flavors of parallels. This is a really thick card, probably the thickest Score card I've ever seen.

Ruffin, by the way, was another inaugural Rockie.

Category 3: Pitchers Who Rake

2003 Ultra Gold Medallion #26 Mike Hampton

It's possible that we're already into the age of the universal DH, not realizing when pitchers hit in the 2019 World Series that it might have been the end of an era. We were all so caught up with Baby Shark back then and didn't realize that #PitchersWhoRake might never trend again. 

Pitchers, of course, can hit. Sometimes. I can't remember whose blog I saw it on, but I was recently made aware of Craig Lefferts's walk-off home run in 1986. And let's not forget Bartolo Colon's glorious homer at Petco Park. Here we have five-time Silver Slugger Mike Hampton on a die-cut Gold Medallion card. Note that he's running the bases, not a common sight at all for a pitcher. 

2003 Donruss #279 Jason Jennings

Jason Jennings didn't do quite as well at the plate, but the card back of this 2003 Donruss issue does remind us that he hit a home run and pitched a complete game shutout in his debut game on August 23rd, 2001, something no one had ever done before. 

Donruss gave him a great card in 2003, a Coors Field card that will slot in to one of the many empty slots in my Coors Field frankenset. It's hard to tell, but that's a more youthful-looking forest back behind the center field wall.

Category 4: Rockies at the Plate

2004 Upper Deck #259 Chris Stynes

I've never once claimed to be an expert in 2004 Upper Deck. I've only shown the set on this blog once before. But two things about this card caught my eye. First is obviously Chris Stynes's batting stance, consistent with a Fleer card from the same year, the only other time Stynes has appeared on this blog. It's the typical view of a Coors Field card, showing one of the dugouts. I'm guessing the Dodgers were in town then.

Second, upon much closer inspection, I spotted the tiny photo of the Coors Field clocktower in the purple area on the bottom. That's what Upper Deck used on vertical cards, compared with the right field upper deck (not an accident, I'm sure) on horizontal Rockies cards.

It's a very purple card on the back, part of one of the more heavily color-coded sets to come out of Upper Deck. There are no more stadium photos, but there is a headshot of Stynes, and a short paragraph about his first career grand slam on June 19th, 2003, which UD incorrectly listed as June 20th.

2010 Upper Deck #176 Ryan Spilborghs

Ryan Spilborghs was a fan favorite during his playing days, but we've really come to enjoy him as part of the Rockies TV crew. He was remote during the 2020 regular season, and the broadcast team would periodically check in on him at home to see how his barbecuing was going. I liked him when he was a player, and now that he and Cory Sullivan, whom we saw in Part 1, are on the broadcast team, I've grown to like him even more.

But there aren't many broadcaster cards out there, so we'll have to go back to his playing days to find a card. Like Stynes, he's a righty, but this angle gives us a look at the opposite dugout. Notice how they changed the color of the dugout roof over the years.

Unlike many cards in 2010 Upper Deck, UD did a reasonably good job of obscuring any official team logos on Spilly's card, something they needed to do after losing their MLB license. If they had taken this much care on other cards in Series 1, they may not have ended up in legal trouble. Still, there's a little glimpse of the CR logo on the inset headshot at the bottom, so that might be enough to put this out of compliance.

On the back, Upper Deck was sure to mention the great highlight of Spilborghs's career, his walk-off grand slam on August 24th, 2009, the first in Rockies history. The TV crew spent plenty of time on that highlight this year, as Charlie Blackmon hit the second in September. Same part of the park, too, but over what's now a higher wall.

Category 5: Great Photos

1997 Ultra #440 Bill Swift

As I usually do when I put these pairings together, I'm going to break my own rules a little and add a third card to this category. I had the idea of making another oddly specific category, but I realized I had already shown the card in question once before. So we'll start with Bill Swift nursing his shoulder. It's from '97 Fleer Ultra, and it gives us a less-glamorous look at the life of a right-handed pitcher. 

You'll want to flip the card over to get a couple images of him on the mound. You'll find two there, arranged in a foreground and background style similar to 1993 Flair.

2000 Pacific Ruby #150 Neifi Perez

Here's that Pacific card I promised, and yes, of course it has red foil. Red, or "Ruby" foil, as Pacific calls it here, has become as rare as a forkball. It's a good color accent to this Phillies player's uniform, who is doing his best to make Neifi Pérez's life difficult. Normally this would be a difficult cameo to pin down, but fortunately, the Phillies helpfully wear their uniform numbers on their sleeves. #6 on the Phillies in 1999 was Doug Glanville, who recently appeared here on a Pacific card of his own.

On the back, below some very tiny statistics, is a short paragraph about Pérez's day on June 6th, 1999. Besides being the 55th anniversary of D-Day, that was also the day that he went 3-for-5 with a triple, a home run, and two RBI. That was a game against the Brewers, just a year after they switched to the National League.

My idea was to make a whole section for "Phillies Cameos at Second Base", but realized that a particular Mike Lansing card already entered my collection in 2015. Rather than show a duplicate, I just lumped this one in here. And it's not the last cameo we'll see today.

2000 Upper Deck #378 Terry Shumpert

Terry Shumpert makes another appearance a little more than a week after his last. The relatively unknown Rockie got a good action photo in 2000 Upper Deck, one of the least-plentiful UD sets in my collection. This is obviously a spring training shot, and the white car in the background reminds me a lot of that famous Luis Alvarado parking lot card in 1973 Topps. I'm not sure which car is behind the athletic Shumpert, but if I had to guess, it might be one of the first-generation Jeep Wagoneers.

Category 6: Oddballs

2010 Pacific Coast League Top Prospects Multi-Ad #7 Esmil Rogers

You don't get a box like this without a few oddballs in it. In addition to a whole deck of MLB Showdown cards, there were a few Minor League cards. Esmil Rogers is one of the few whose name I recognized as an eventual Major Leaguer. The Dominican righty spent part of seven years in the Majors, four with the Rockies. 

Really it was more like six, because his 2009 appearance consisted of a single game in mid-September. That was mentioned on this 2010 MiLB card, as well as his gradual rise through the Rockies farm system. The card back of this PCL card says he's "on a long list of elite Colorado starting pitching prospects". Usually they remain just that, prospects.

From their inauguration through 2014, The Colorado Springs Sky Sox were the Rockies' Triple-A affiliate. That changed in 2015, when the Rockies switched to the Albuquerque Isotopes. The only team that's stayed in the same place as part of the Rockies farm system since the team's inception is the Class-A Asheville Tourists. Rogers pitched there in 2007, going 7-4 with a 3.75 ERA.

1992-93 Ultra #54 Reggie Williams

Our last card isn't really an oddball. It's a Fleer Ultra NBA card, which is of course a major brand. But in my collection, basketball cards are few and far between. I probably have more Minor League cards than NBA cards, to be honest. So that makes this something of a rarity for me.

There were a few of these Denver Nuggets cards nestled at one end of the box, and since basketball is so much more of a contact sport than baseball is, you have lots of opportunities for cameos. The cameo on this card of Reggie Williams is none other than Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley, who was then in his final year with the Philadelphia 76ers.

I certainly don't know NBA jerseys well enough to place this in Denver's McNichols Arena or in The Spectrum in Philadelphia. But boy, did the Nuggets have some great uniforms then. 

Like his teammate Dikembe Mutombo, Williams attended Georgetown for college, and was a freshman when they won the NCAA championship in 1984. College basketball experts can put those pieces together to realize that he was college teammates with Patrick Ewing, and took over as Georgetown's best player once the Knicks drafted Ewing.

Again, not an oddball. I just love Hall-of-Fame cameos no matter what the sport.

And with that, dear readers, I'm caught up on trade posts!

The Trading Post #158: The Collector (Part 1: Topps)

Just a few days ago, I said that Opening Day Mascots was my favorite insert set of all. I stand by that, but what I didn't know until I got this box of cards from Chris at The Collector was that it used to be a subset in the Opening Day set itself, circa 2007.

2007 Topps Opening Day #192 Dinger

Dinger is getting us pumped up for a two-part series, which will cover a Pay It Forward box that Chris sent to me early this year. After this, I'll finally be caught up on trade posts from all you generous bloggers and readers. I can't thank you all enough.

Like the Rockies' uniforms themselves, Dinger's shade of purple has evolved a little bit over the years. It's a bit darker these days. Even though this was a 2007 set, this photo was already a decade old when Topps picked it for the white-bordered '07 Opening Day set. It's from all the way back in 1997, which was the year that players league-wide wore the Jackie Robinson 50th Anniversary patch. The obscured Met has that patch on his right sleeve if you look closely.

This is one of the few Dinger cards that doesn't mention the dinosaur fossil story, an often embellished tale which does have a grain of truth to it. Instead, the card back tells us about how he works with elementary school kids to advocate literacy and fitness, and that he's a hit with fans of all ages.

The 2007 Opening Day design differs from the base Topps set in an obvious way. The border is white with gold foil instead of the bold black with silver foil we got that year. The Mascot subset has one other slight difference from a player card, and sharp-eyed readers might notice that there's no facsimile signature. 

Fortunately, I have the real thing.

2007 Topps Opening Day #73 Cory Sullivan

Looking at Opening Day side-by-side with Topps base really makes it obvious how different Opening Day used to be. This link has Cory Sullivan's black-bordered 2007 Topps card, and they have a pretty different feel. There's a minor difference, in that the facsimile autograph is shrunk slightly to make room for the Opening Day logo, but the white borders and gold foil make it feel a lot different. The black borders are nice, but they make the card feel a little claustrophobic. It's subtle, but this looks a little more open to my eye.

Other than that, not much is changed. The card back is identical, other than the card number of course, and the Opening Day logo, which occupies a usually conspicuously empty area on the left.

2008 Topps Opening Day #162 Jeff Francis

The whole box of cards was organized chronologically, making sorting extremely easy. That was much appreciated. That meant that this 2008 Opening Day card was quite nearby in the whole stack, and the red borders make this pretty easy to spot at a glance. The design is pretty similar, but there are a few differences here as well. There's no color-coding to speak of on the front, but the polka dots at the top have gold foil. That's just colored ink in the base set. Anywhere else that has foil is gold instead of silver, but the differences don't end there.

The major complaint everyone has about the 2008 set is the notch at the top, which is where the Topps logo lives. Maybe you've gotten more used to that by now, because your smartphone probably has something like that. But if you don't like that feature, you'll like Opening Day even less, because Topps made another notch at the bottom for the Opening Day logo. That forces the facsimile signature up slightly without resizing it, and that led Topps to simply crop the photo more tightly.

Have a look at the 2008 base card, pulled from my existing collection:

2008 Topps #511 Jeff Francis

The card backs are again identical, other than the Opening Day logo appearing like a watermark (think of 1991 Topps backs) and the card number.

The write-up is the same, and both cards praised Jeff Francis as the Rockies ace, pointing out that he was the Game 1 starter in all three Rockies playoff series in 2007. He won two, and the loss was Game 1 of the 2007 World Series, where he lost to Josh Beckett. It just so happens that tonight is Game 1 of the 2020 World Series, where we're seeing Clayton Kershaw face off against Tyler Glasnow.

2009 Topps Update #UH28 Matt Murton

Advancing one year into the Topps library, we come to 2009, with a mid-swing bat barrel shot of Matt Murton. I'm pretty good at remembering the Rockies who only played in Denver for a short time, but this one came as a complete surprise. He played 29 games as a Rockie at the end of his MLB career, which came to an end in 2009. He played in Japan for a while, then tried to mount a comeback via the Minors as recently as 2017, but that didn't pan out.

I really don't remember any of this. The only thing I remember about Matt Murton is that for a few weeks in the mid-2000s, he was The Guy to have in Fantasy Baseball early in his Cubs career. But now I have a Topps Update card to document his short time as a Rockie.

2012 Topps Archives #143 Marco Scutaro

On the other hand, I do remember Marco Scutaro. He only played 95 games as a Rockie, but he clearly made much more of an impact on my memory. He got a card in the first Topps Archives set, which used the 1980 design, among others.

As you see here, his only season with the Rockies was in 2012, and even then it was only for a few months. Near the 2012 trade deadline, the Rockies and Giants did a swap, Scutaro for Charlie Culberson. Luckily for Scutaro, he ended up being a part of the Giants' even-year magic. He was named the MVP of the 2012 NLCS, catching the final out off the bat of Matt Holliday on a rainy night in San Francisco. A really rainy night, actually. He'd go on to get his only World Series ring that year.

On the other side of the trade, Charlie Culberson remained with the Rockies for a couple years, and is currently with the Braves. He played in his own NLCS as recently as last Wednesday.

Long before all this, Scutaro was a Minor Leaguer featured in the documentary film A Player to be Named Later, which chronicled several players and their journey through Triple-A.

2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary HTA #HTA-12 Troy Tulowitzki

I'll have all the other brands in Part 2, but this is our final Topps card of the post. It has the feel of an insert, which would go well with all the other inserts I showed in Part 4 of the previous trade series, but it's actually from a 25-card set distributed through Topps' Home Team Advantage program. You had to go to a Topps-authorized hobby store to get this, and I haven't frequented local card shops recently to know whether it's still active.

The silver foil Diamond Anniversary logo on the front clearly dates this to 2011, right in the middle of Troy Tulowitzki's tenure with the Rockies. The card back gives us one of Tulo's "Diamond Deeds", and they picked August 10th, 2009, the same 5-for-5 day they profiled on his Career Day insert a year later.

It was a really good game for him and the team.

Most of this box from Chris included brands other than Topps, and I'll have about twice as many cards coming up in Part 2. Until then, enjoy the World Series!

The Trading Post #102: The Collector

It's always a bittersweet day, the last day of the regular season. 162 games throughout the spring, summer, and fall, with few days off. And more often than not, unless you're the Yankees, that's the end. Time to pack your bags and wait for spring.

But not this year.

This year, the Rockies are heading to the Postseason for just the fourth time. They've still never won the NL West, but the existence of the Wild Card has given us Coloradans a few tastes of October baseball, or as we like to call it in these parts, Rocktober.

1994 Flair #372 Marvin Freeman

A bespectacled Marvin Freeman was a member of the Rockies when they first made the playoffs in 1995, but he had elbow surgery right after the season ended, so he missed their first Wild Card appearance against the Braves, his former team. He still made his mark on the Rockies, starting the game the first time the Rockies pitched a combined shutout at Coors Field (I think my dad was there that day), and he remains atop the single-season leaderboard for ERA, with 2.80.

As usual with 1994 Flair, there's gold foil for days, and it'll go really nicely with that Frank Thomas card my mom picked out. And it was part of a stack of 50 cards that Chris from The Collector sent as part of a 50/50 swap offer he made in mid-August. He already got my half of the trade, and this is the second time he's sent me cards.

I know Jaybee's blogroll is dwindling a bit, but it's nice to see newcomers keeping our community fresh.

1998 Topps Chrome #310 Ellis Burks

New shiny cards also keep my collection fresh, and I got a nice, flat, Chrome card of Ellis Burks. Burks, an ex-Red Sock, made up a pretty large portion of what I sent Chris, as he lists "former Red Sox" on his wantlist. My duplcates box is running a bit thin these days, so other than a few recent cards, former Bostonians who later suited up for the Rockies is about all I could find.

In my opinion, 1998 Topps looks way better in this shiny silver than the gold border and foil the normal cards had that year. It's not quite as imposing as the oversized Super Chrome cards Topps released in '98, but it shows Burks rounding the bases after hitting one out at Candlestick Park, with a dejected Giants infielder returning to his spot on the diamond. That makes me think this might be a late-September game, because the Rockies regularly heated up in September, regardless of where they were in the standings, and beat up on the Giants to spoil their playoff hopes as the season drew to a close.

I'm telling you, you can set your watch to the cycle of a Rockies season.

1997 Finest #28 Jamey Wright B

Jamey Wright, despite pitching six seasons for the Rockies over two stints, has only appeared on this blog once before. That card came from Cards from the Quarry, who has since dropped from the active blogroll, leaving just Rosenort and me to cover our region of the NL West.

Wright's second appearance comes on an unpeeled Finest card from 1997, part of a stack of pristine cards from the same set. I'll get to peeling right after I publish this. It's what I do. Nick liberates graded cards from their plastic enclosures, I peel shiny cards.

The back of this card, clearly not important enough to ship with a protective coating, talks about Wright's ability to generate ground ball outs. Even after just a couple years of Coors Field's existence, it was obvious that fly-ball pitchers were going to have trouble. That's partly what's made Jon Gray so successful, and he's who the Rockies will send to the mound on Wednesday for the Wild Card game in Phoenix to face Zack Greinke.

2002 Topps Ten #84 Todd Helton RUNS

After having never seeing the Topps Ten set before, it's shown up in two consecutive trades. Helton made it further up the Runs leaderboard than Pierre climbed the Triples list, just one run behind Alex Rodriguez, but still a dozen behind Slammin' Sammy Sosa, who hit a not-league-leading 64 in 2001.

Science nerds among you may have heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, where you stumble across a particular thing or fact, then you suddenly start seeing it everywhere. That's not exactly what's going on here, as I truly never had this set in my collection before, but it's oddly coincidental that a set from 2002 just started appearing repeatedly with no warning.

2008 Upper Deck Timeline #24 Matt Holliday

Helton and Matt Holliday were both part of the Rockies when they made their magical run to the World Series in 2007, and Helton was still around the next time in 2009. Those two and Troy Tulowitzki were the faces of the Rockies the last time the Postseason came to Denver.

Thanks to that playoff run, the Rockies got a lot of cards in 2008. Upper Deck did an especially good job, slotting Matt Holliday into the one-hit-wonder UD Timeline set. Holliday led the NL in RBIs in 2007, and also won the batting title, an award the Rockies have practically monopolized ever since they became a franchise. None other than Charlie Blackmon will walk away with that award in 2017, just a year after DJ LeMahieu edged out Daniel Murphy.

This card makes no mention of his NLCS MVP award, but does mention a 17-game hitting streak he put together in August 2007. I also see quite a few similarities on the card back to UD Masterpieces, just a bit more modern-looking.

2015 Topps Triple Threads #36 Carlos Gonzalez

Besides a couple guys from the broadcast crew, only Carlos Gonzalez remains with the team from their previous Postseason appearance. Matt Holliday, Ubaldo Jimenez, and a few others are still in the league, but the rest of the roster will be experiencing Rocktober for the first time as players.

This ultra-fancy and ultra-thick Topps Triple Threads card made me laugh just a bit when they tied his "CarGo" nickname to something that could also describe his flashy Lamborghini. It's a cute pun, but perhaps something better suited to Bunt or an Opening Day insert set than something like Triple Threads.

By the way, Topps, you can have that idea of a "Players and their cars" insert set. I'd collect the heck out of that one.

2017 Topps Heritage #258 David Dahl / Raimel Tapia (RC)

For the most part, this post has looked back at past Rockies glory, but guys like this could play a huge role in helping the Rockies to success in future years. Most of the pieces were there last year, but it took a new manager and a beefed-up bullpen to finally crack the secret to success and the third-best record in team history. Dropping two out of three to the Dodgers this weekend doesn't bode well for the NLDS if they win the Wild Card game, but they did give a lot of playing time to the young guys on Sunday.

It's hard to see a Rookie Stars two-player card on the 1968 burlap design without thinking of the famed Nolan Ryan / Jerry Koosman rookie card. Both Dahl and Tapia got semi-regular playing time this season, and while they're not necessarily known to casual fans yet, they'll ensure the Rockies will have a strong outfield for years to come.

2016 Topps #661B DJ LeMahieu SP (42 Jersey)

Finally, last year's batting champion appears facing the Giants yet again, although this short-print was taken on Jackie Robinson Day in 2015. Candlestick Park was no more, instead taking place in AT&T Park right on the bay. The Rockies won that contest by an appropriate score of 4-2, and while its a bit tricky to tell who's who when everyone wears the same uniform number, the label on the runner's batting helmet gives him away as Angel Pagan. That's enough information to pinpoint this play to the bottom of the 6th, when Buster Posey grounded into a 5-4-3 double play.

I almost never deliberately chase short-prints, but I'm happy when I happen to run across one. Thanks to Chris and this 50/50 swap, I found one that is specific enough to find the actual play. I didn't even have to shell out for a $10 Topps Now card to do that, but I hope there are several more of those to come in the upcoming Postseason.

The Trading Post #85: The Collector

Two days before Christmas was a big incoming mailday for me. Fuji, Daniel, and Peter all sent cards that arrived that day, and a fourth—the post you're about to see. This one is from Chris of the new blog, The Collector, apparently a pun on both his career and his hobby. Three cards arrived safely packaged inside a holiday greeting card, which Chris offered on a mid-December post.

2013 Topps 1972 Topps Minis #TM19 Carlos Gonzalez

1972 Topps. That one I know at a glance.

I also know the distinctive smooth-but-not-glossy feel of Topps Archives by heart, and this mini of Carlos Gonzalez fits that description perfectly. It's still a little bit strange to see a sharp, nighttime action shot at Coors Field on such a retro design, and the disco font at the top makes the team name look a lot like "Rookies". But we still get a good write-up about CarGo's well-rounded baseball skills, as he's a threat on the basepaths, at the plate, and in the cavernous outfield at 20th and Blake.

1972 Topps had cartoons on the back, and this retro set is faithful to that. This one is sort of a trivia question, but I've sure never heard it. The card asks "what pitch is sometimes referred to as a "Bugs Bunny?"

Apparently that's slang for a change-up, but I must admit that I've not once heard that in all my years of baseball fandom. I guess it has something to do with this cartoon. I'm sure I've seen it before, but the slowball didn't stand out in particular relative to the rest of his cartoony antics.

2013 Topps Chasing History #CH-97 Troy Tulowitzki

This is a card you've seen before in various forms on this blog. I'm still chasing the mini to complete the rainbow, but I like this card so much that it's a candidate to become my next wallet card, once that Girardi disintegrates enough.

Tulowitzki fell just one short of hitting the 25-homer milestone for the first time since this card was printed. He got 24 in a Blue Jays uniform last year, but if you count the ALDS, he got his 25th. He also had a handful in 2015 after The Trade, some of which you can see in this awesome supercut of Blue Jays homers, set to Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down".

2003 Finest Bat Relics #FRB-TH Todd Helton B (MEM)

The last card from Chris is a Todd Helton bat relic. It's from 2003 Finest, and by coincidence, I happened to have purchased a couple other relics from this set at a recent card show. I'm usually pretty behind on card show posts. There's just so much to include.

But anyway, as awesome as Topps Finest consistently is, 2003 still rises to the top of my favorites list. This relic design lacks the hexagons that I like so much from the base set, but I love the simple design and color scheme here.

A bonus on this card is a look at the Rockies 10 Season Anniversary patch on Helton's right sleeve. They began play in 1993, which meant their tenth full season occurred n 2002.

Not counting the strike, of course.

A few weeks ago, I finally bought some 75- and 100-pt thick toploaders to properly organize and protect my relic cards. Now that this is scanned, I know just where to put it, and it will fit in nicely in front of my two relics from the card show, Lance Berkman and Mark Mulder.

Thanks to Chris for adding a Rockie to that small stack.