The Trading Post #174: Dime Boxes (Part 3: Shiny)

One year later, I'll finally be wrapping up the longest post series ever. I've had this last little pile of goodies set aside from Nick's 10th anniversary over at Dime Boxes, which has now moved houses with me in the same little team bag.

But wait, you might say. Didn't Nick just celebrate his 12th blog anniversary with another giveaway? Yes, yes he did. And I have a whole new stack of cards on my desk related to that, which I hope to get to before his 13th. 

No promises.

But even with all the changes over the past year, weekends in mid-January still mean NFL playoffs, which make for some of my favorite background content while writing these posts. 

What completely escaped my attention several days ago is that somehow I just passed my own tenth blog anniversary! As of the 15th, apparently I've kept this little thing going for a full decade. And looking back on my first-ever post, it was pretty much just an explanation about how Nick got me started on this whole thing in the first place.

We have truly come full-circle.

2002 Topps Chrome Traded #T68 Sandy Alomar Jr.

What hasn't changed in the past decade is my love for shiny cards. Part 3 of this blog series that has sprawled across the biggest period of change in my life will focus on the shiny, or at least the serially-numbered.

If any of my readers play the daily baseball-themed puzzle game Immaculate Grid, take note of the above card for the next time Cleveland and Colorado intersect. Sandy Alomar, Jr., the 1990 AL Rookie of the Year (also a useful bit of info) briefly stopped by 20th & Blake for 38 games in 2002, as documented on this Topps Traded card. A true "Short-Term Stop", to borrow Nick's phrase.

Alomar was well into a lengthy career by 2002, so the short paragraph on the card back only has room to simply tell us that the White Sox traded the veteran catcher to the Rockies for Enemencio Pacheco, a pitching prospect who never progressed past Triple-A.

Speaking of the White Sox, the team where Alomar spent the second-longest portion of his career, I recently learned of a documentary available on YouTube called Last Comiskey. I've only watched one of three parts so far, but it offers a look at the 1990 White Sox season, their last in the original Comiskey Park.

2017 Finest Breakthroughs #FB-NA Nolan Arenado

Turning to 2017, when Nolan Arenado still covered the hot corner for the Rockies, we come to the Topps Finest insert set "Breakthroughs".

As best I can tell, this set was unique to 2017, but it absolutely has the look and feel of a mid-90s insert set, something like Power Zone from Stadium Club. It has all the elements. Huge block lettering in all capitals, an eye catching star pattern suitable for a comic book panel, a team logo that is bursting through an area of fractured rock or broken glass, and a close-up action shot. The player's name and the Topps Finest logo are squeezed into the corners like a mere afterthought.

How can you not love something like this?

The theme does actually have a point, in that the card back gives us the player's "Breakthrough Moment". One of Nolan's mentioned was his second-ever Major League home run, a grand slam off of Cy Young winner David Price in early 2013.

2017 Topps Chrome #92 Trevor Story

I'm not sure where Nick found all this 2017 Topps Chrome, but he sent me a base card that could possibly have come from the same pack as that great Arenado insert card. 

Six years ago to the day, the Refractor version of this Trevor Story card appeared on the blog in The Trading Post #112, and then the Prism Refractor version about a year later, both courtesy of Julie at A Cracked Bat, whose blog has sadly gone silent.

Surely I am nearing having the rainbow by now, right?

2021 Topps Update Gold #US195 C.J. Cron /2021

To my eye, this C.J. Cron parallel from 2021 looks more bronze than gold, but there's a /2021 serial number to prove that this is indeed the gold parallel, serially numbered with a print run equal to the card's calendar year.

Cron, currently a free agent, finally found a spot to settle down for a few seasons after changing hands like a hot potato. The card back calls it "five homes in five years", bouncing between the Angels, Rays, Twins, and briefly the Tigers, before finally reaching the National League and spending a few seasons in Colorado. The Rockies traded him back to the Angels in late 2023 along with Randal Grichuk in return for a couple pitching prospects.

Guys like that are useful to keep in mind for Immaculate Grid. I can't tell you how many times I should have guessed Nelson Cruz.

2003 Topps Traded Gold #T265 Clint Barmes FY (RC) /2003

Going back to 2003, we find that Topps Gold had a slightly lower print run. Topps oddly decided to document their 52nd Anniversary on the card front, as well as adding a 1st-year Card stamp that I believe is unique to 2003. The Chrome variety of this card has the same stamp in a non-foil version, and I've also seen it on a Hanley Ramirez card.

Thanks to Google Image Search for finding those. This is my 379th post. No one's memory is that good, not even mine.

Prophetically, in The Trading Post #134, I pointed out exactly where on the card back I would expect to find a serial number if I had a rarer version of this Clint Barmes card. Little did I know that one would eventually find its way to me.

2018 Topps Fire Hot Starts Gold #HS-19 Charlie Blackmon

This is not the first gold parallel from 2018 Topps Fire that has been added to my collection. In fact, it's not even the first such card of Charlie Blackmon. For a brand I can't recall ever purchasing at retail, I have a surprising number of Topps Fire cards filling my binders.

This one of Blackmon and his iconic beard is from the Hot Starts insert set, which highlights strong early-season performances. Topps got pretty specific on the card back, pointing out that Blackmon's first seven home runs of 2017 came in a mere 77 plate appearances, good for a "blistering" [note the fire pun] 9.1% Home Run Percentage.

Interestingly, for all you "Coors!" folks, those first seven home runs all came on the road, tying the team mark set by Ian Stewart in 2010. Even Trevor Story's white-hot 2016 debut included some shots at Coors Field. Refer to my prior post in this series for my fond memories of catching at least one of those at Buffalo Wild Wings.

It seems quite rare for the Rockies to play at home on Opening Day. Their home opener is usually a few days into the season, and that trend will continue for 2024, scheduled for April 5th, on what would have been my dad's 77th birthday.

The Rockies are indeed known for hot starts. More often than not, April and May is the best time to be a Rockies fan. No wonder I like spring so much. But by the time we reach the All-Star break, the team is usually out of the running.

By the way, we know Blackmon will be a Rockie for at least one more year, but to my knowledge he has not yet announced any plans for retirement.

2016 Donruss Optic Pink #48 Jonathan Gray RR

Jon Gray, who went by Jonathan on this 2016 Panini card, finally got a taste of the World Series and even won his ring with the Texas Rangers last year. If it's not going to be here, at least it's nice to see former Rockies find success somewhere.

In the 2023 Fall Classic, Gray threw 4.2 innings, struck out seven, and even got the win in Game 3 after taking over for Max Scherzer who had to depart with back spasms. That's the perfect way to get around the difficulty Jon Gray often had in the first inning.

This shiny Donruss Optic card is the Pink parallel, unique enough to warrant a second look on this blog, but not rare enough to earn a serial number.

2021 Bowman Chrome Prospect Autographs #CPA-DM Daniel Montano (AU)

Nick was apologetic about this card's condition. He knew I'd enjoy an on-card Rockies autograph, no matter how obscure the player, and I'm glad he threw it in. The blue ink is a little smudged, and though I was able to clean it up somewhat well, I assume it once had something spilled on it. I probably could have done a better job cleaning it, but didn't want to further damage the autograph.

We'll see how Daniel Montano progresses, but he hasn't really spent much time above the High-A level yet and has dropped off the team's top-30 prospects list. It isn't looking too promising. Still, I'll never turn down a shiny autograph.

2020 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs #RA-DN Dom Núñez (AU)

The final card of this series is another on-card autograph which seems to have made it through the past few years in much better shape. Dom Núñez even cracked the code and made it to the Majors, though unfortunately he put up a -1.0 bWAR over three seasons, and despite showing a bit of pop for a catcher by hitting twelve home runs, he never exceeded a .200 batting average. Even in this day and age where a guy like Luis Arráez can hit .354 and be an extreme outlier, .180 for your career is not going to cut it.

In any case, I do remember seeing Núñez play, and I can at least make out his initials in his signature. I also enjoy the 2020 design. It's one of those designs I got quite familiar with, given how much time I spent on Topps Bunt when nothing was happening in the early years of the pandemic.

It's unlikely I'll ever match my high-water mark from 2015 of 72 posts in a year, but I certainly hope to beat 2023's total of just 6. I'm a third of the way there already, and looking forward to my second decade of baseball card blogging.

Congratulations to Nick on on ten, eleven, and twelve years!

The Trading Post #165: Night Owl Cards

Well, the mail system seems to be stabilizing somewhat. I'm sure it will be a while before it returns to being a thing that just works, but it's working well enough for Night Owl and I to complete a trade in a reasonable amount of time.

Shortly before Christmas, a particular Cody Bellinger card from one of my 2019 Topps Big League posts caught his eye, and I packaged it up along with a couple older Bills and Sabres cards that I happened to have. Mere weeks later, a return arrived in my mailbox with some 2020 needs and a few other goodies. 

2000 Upper Deck Hitter's Club #42 Todd Helton

As the years go by, Upper Deck cards grace the pages of our various blogs less and less frequently. It's been over a decade now since UD lost its license, which really is a shame. They made great cards year after year. Not everything was a masterpiece (pun intended), but you could count on some nice designs. That includes this Hitter's Club card of Todd Helton, part of a small 90-card set. 

The lefty's card has silver foil elements all over the card, including the set name, Helton's position and uniform number, the UD logo, various accent lines, and ".320", representing his prior year's batting average. 

Upper Deck picked well in fleshing out this small set as the millennium changed, as 2000 would be Helton's best season. The card back says that his "offensive potential is unlimited". It also has a tiny graph labeled Career Projection, which is mathematically useless. The Y-axis is unlabeled, the X-axis is scaled unevenly, and the so-called chart of his career (up to the year 2000) is a white line that more or less looks like a square root sign. 

This set would have been fine without it. I can confirm that it's different on each player's card, at least.

Elsewhere in the small checklist, there was a 17-card subset called Hitting The Show, which featured a unique mint-green foil. I've seen it twice over the years, but this is the first time the actual base set has appeared on the blog.

2019 Topps Walmart Holiday Photo Variations #HW165 Nolan Arenado (candy cane bat)

Jumping forward almost two decades into Rockies superstar history, we come to Nolan Arenado. This is one of the holiday parallels that Topps has been doing for a few years now, and looks quite similar to what Nick sent me during the 2020 regular season. Same holly and ivy elements on the 2019 design, same green and red colors, but you might happen to notice that Nolan Arenado's bat is actually a festive candy cane.

Which led me to think that I really should take my wreath down. It's almost February.

2020 Topps Fire #121 Nolan Arenado

We now come to 2020, and since buying cards at retail has pretty much been out of the question for almost a year, I've become much more familiar with their digital equivalents in Topps Bunt. I have this card in Bunt, but I'm glad to have a hard copy of it, too. It just has an extra presence, especially a design-centric set like Topps Fire.

The card back tells us about Nolan's torrid August 2019, in which he hit a dozen home runs. Only Tulowitzki's September 2010 was better among Rockies, who hit fifteen.

Arenado has an amusing pose on this card, likely one of the extra base hit celebrations that players often use when gesturing back toward their teammates in the dugout. We saw lots of that with the Nationals in the 2019 Postseason. They had a Baby Shark gesture for each hit, which varied in intensity and enthusiasm depending on whether it was a single, double, or triple.

2020 Stadium Club #98 Sam Hilliard RC

Sam Hilliard is doing the same thing on his 2020 Stadium Club card, apparently standing on third base I believe inside Oracle Park. I'm not quite sure what this gesture is supposed to be, and I don't recall seeing any Rockies player do this during the 2019 season. I'm guessing it's meant to represent a moose or deer or bighorn sheep. One of the many ruminants that roam the Colorado wilderness which some of these guys probably hunt. What I am sure of is that I didn't pick up on what Arenado was doing until I saw the same thing on Hilliard's Stadium Club card.

Stadium Club is awesome as always, and Topps found a great way to color-code such a minimalist design with a series of colored bars in the lower left. Silver foil nameplate, silver foil Stadium Club logo, add in a Rookie Card logo for Sam Hilliard. It's masterful, frankly.

The color coding is carried over to the back, where the vertical bars migrate to the upper right and serve as the backdrop for the card number. There's a nice posed headshot on the back, one year of stats (Minor League stats for Hilliard), and a short write-up.

Truly, if I could collect only one set a year, it would be Stadium Club. I know Nick just named Big League as his 2020 set of the year, which is reasonable, but I enjoy the photography and design too much to let TSC lose its crown.

2020 Stadium Club #261 Charlie Blackmon

Charlie Blackmon's entry into the 300-card 2020 Stadium Club set reminds us why horizontal cards must always exist. The composition here is just perfect. I particularly like the out-of-focus player in the bullpen just watching Blackmon's heroics in right-center at Coors Field.

This could be a Nike ad, you know. Look how perfectly you can see the Swoosh on the sole of Blackmon's shoe.

The card back gives us a disappointing reminder about the 2020 season, telling us that Blackmon has appeared in three consecutive All-Star games. Technically that streak is still alive, but that was one election that didn't end up happening last year.

2020 Stadium Club #120 Nolan Arenado

When Rockies hit extra base hits and perform defensive heroics, what often follows is a chance for the Coors Field scoreboard operator to flash the "Rockies Win" graphic up on the banner, which is what you can see beyond Arenado's left shoulder. I saw it on September 29th, 2019, the final game of the 2019 regular season, and my most recent trip to Coors Field. Little did I know how much that moment was worth savoring.

One day I'll be back, and might even get to see Arenado get doused with the Powerade cooler after such a win, which is what's being documented here.

2020 Stadium Club Red Foil #12 David Dahl

Of course, there's no guarantee that once I finally get a chance to safely return to Coors Field that Arenado will still be there. David Dahl won't be, as he's moved on to Texas. But he did have four injury-shortened years as a Rockie, giving him the chance to get some great Coors Field cards. He had a similar on-deck shot in 2019, and this one gives us a slightly different angle of right field, right about where Charlie Blackmon would have been when he made the catch in card #261.

I have stories about this part of the park, too. Behind the warning track, those are luxury field-level boxes, offering a more immersive experience than the "normal" suites found above the Club Level deck in foul territory. I've never had the chance to catch a game from the warning track, but somehow I do have a lapel pin from these suites. 

Above them, you'll find the out-of-town scoreboard that I frequently use to pinpoint the date of a photo. I can see that the Yankees were hosting the Diamondbacks that day, and the Mets visited the White Sox. Add in some scores and pitcher uniform numbers (the white numbers to the right of the score), and we come up with July 30th, 2019. The Dodgers were visiting that day, and won 9-4. That would mean that the #28 cameo at first base is Tyler White, who appeared in twelve games that year and scratched out a single hit. He did not play in 2020.

Continuing our tour of Coors Field, we can see the right field seats, which is where I sat during my first trip to Coors in 1995. The concourse behind those seats is part of the continuous path around the stadium, and in that area you'll find one of the funnel cake stations which smells pretty good, the interactive fan area where you can practice your hitting and pitching (or tee-ball, for the little ones), and during part of the 2019 season, a replica of Neil Armstrong's spacesuit, which made the rounds to a handful of ballparks to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the first moon landing.

One deck above that is where my sister likes to sit when she takes her little kids to see the Rockies, as it's relatively distant from flying objects. It's also usually pretty well shaded if you sit high enough. The drawback of sitting in this area is that the height of the out-of-town scoreboard makes it impossible to see any action that happens at the base of the wall.

Finally, out of frame and above where the parallel red foil Stadium Club logo is, you'll find The Rooftop. It's a fun place to visit, offers spectacular views of the mountains and the sunsets, and as my friend discovered a couple seasons ago, happens to be where you can get $3 Coors Lights before first pitch.

Maybe this is why Stadium Club remains my favorite set year after year. No other set reminds you of being at the ballpark quite as much as this, and it can bring me back even in the dead of winter.

Thanks for the trade, Night Owl!

The Trading Post #130: Chavez Ravining

If I were to ask you who scored the winning run for the Rockies in their 8-7 win Sunday over the Orioles, who would you guess? Charlie Blackmon? No, he last played Thursday and just hit the Injured List with a calf injury. What about their superstars like Nolan Arenado or Trevor Story? Actually no, although they both reached career home run milestones over the weekend, which we'll touch on later. Could it be someone from their crop of homegrown youngsters, such as McMahon, Rodgers, or Tapia? Nope, sorry.

2017 Topps Fire Green #58 Jeff Hoffman /199

Of all people, it was Jeff Hoffman, who was called up on Friday to start against Baltimore. The O's, by the way, were making their first trip to Denver since the 2004 season. Hoffman did make it five innings but took a no decision.

So what the heck was a starting pitcher doing in the 9th inning two days later? I can't be exactly sure, but he pinch-ran for Daniel Murphy in the final inning, and ended up scoring on a bases-loaded sacrifice fly by Tony Wolters.

Alex from Chavez Ravining included a couple Jeff Hoffman cards as part of a recent trade. Along with Hoffman's yellowish Flame parallel from 2017 Topps Fire, he also sent this Green parallel, numbered to 199. Not only is the Green less common, but longtime readers know that it's basically my favorite color to find on a baseball card.

2017 Topps Fire Golden Grabs Gold Minted #GG-18 George Springer

A few non-Rockies made it into the trade by virtue of their shininess. As usual, Topps Fire printed up a few insert sets for 2017, including this 20-card Golden Grabs set, documenting some of the best catches from across the league. George Springer of the Astros made it in thanks to this snag from May 19th, 2016, which robbed Jose Abreu of a trip around the bases.

This yellowish color signifies it as a Gold Minted parallel, a very appropriate color for an Astros card. It looks a lot like Hoffman's Flame card, though without any refractor action.

2017 Topps Fire Walk It Off Gold Minted #WO-11 Mark Trumbo

We're seeing something pretty similar on Mark Trumbo's Walk It Off card, another Gold Minted variety from a 15-card insert set. Trumbo, who led the Majors in home runs in 2016, has yet to appear in a game this year while recovering from knee surgery. Speaking of the Orioles, he still plays for them, and this card documents his extra-inning heroics on Opening Day 2017.

2018 Topps Chrome Update Pink Refractors #HMT96 Charlie Blackmon

Advancing a year to 2018 Topps Chrome, here's another card with the "HMT" prefix, which I am still trying to figure out. Charlie Blackmon joined Trevor Story in Washington, D.C. on the NL All-Star squad last year. He was mic'd up for a fun inning in center field, but didn't do as well at the plate as Story did, going 0-3.

The All-Star logo is visible on the waterslide, but unlike the card Julie sent, this one is a colored parallel. It's the second time this background color threw me off, as I kept checking Beckett for a Purple parallel. Officially, it's Pink, which is precisely the line of reasoning I went down the last time I saw one of Charlie Blackmon's 2018 Chrome cards.

2018 Topps Chrome Sepia Refractors #141 Starlin Castro

I may not be able to tell the difference between pink and purple, but I know the art of photography well enough to identify this as a Sepia parallel. Topps helpfully labelled this as a Refractor, a bonus not offered to collectors of the Update version of 2018 Chrome. The presence of that label has always varied from year to year, but I can't remember it varying between sets in the same year.

Starlin Castro had his own extra-innings success during 2017, helping the Yankees sink his former team, the Cubs, in 18 innings thanks to a fielder's choice gone awry. The marathon contest on Sunday Night Baseball featured 48 strikeouts between the two clubs, more than Tony Gwynn had in his worst year.

2019 Topps Heritage #242 Ian Desmond

That sepia-toned card is a great segue into some retro Topps Heritage. This one of Ian Desmond will go nicely with the rest of my 2019 Heritage collection. In fact, I saved a spot in the 9-pocket page for this card. The 1970-themed set does a great job at reenacting some of the more famous cards from the original set, but I don't know of any 1970 card that appears to show a small pile of snow at the shadowy base of the outfield wall. It tends to snow well into May here in Colorado, so I know snow when I see it. Desmond looks really bundled up, too, although this is probably a Cactus League shot.

There are walk-offs referenced all over these cards, and before he took over center field duties from Charlie Blackmon this year, he walked off the Padres on August 23rd, 2018, a 2-out, 2-run shot into the left field bleachers.

Desmond's long career, which reached the 10-season mark last year, consisted of precisely 4,999 at bats when the 2018 season ended. Topps noticed that statistical anomaly, and was sure to point out that his next at-bat would be #5,000. That AB came just a couple months ago, obviously on Opening day 2019 in Miami. He grounded out to short.

2017 Topps Heritage #628 Tony Wolters

Another regular fixture in the Rockies lineup this year is Tony Wolters, who hit his first home run of 2019 last week in Pittsburgh. He's often down at the bottom of the order, but has come up with quite a few key hits this season, including that sacrifice fly that allowed Jeff Hoffman to trot home.

His 2017 Topps Heritage card even mentions sacrifices in its trivia question, asking which Rockie led the NL in 2004. The answer is Royce Clayton, who hasn't appeared on this blog as a Rockie except in a cameo. Also on this card is a rare close-up of a catcher's mitt, plus Wolters's goatee. He's changed it up this year, sporting a pretty awesome mustache.

2017 Topps Heritage High Number Topps Game Rookies #10 Raimel Tapia

It took me a little while to figure out who was depicted on this Topps Heritage insert card, but eventually I realized it was Raimel Tapia, who has been starting in left field most of this season, and performing quite well defensively. This one is part of a 15-card insert set found in the High Number release, which accompanies another 15 cards just like it in the base set. It's a throwback to 1968 Topps Game insert cards, an early example of an insert set. The original '68 insert set is filled with Hall of Famers, including Rod Carew, Hank Aaron, a late-career Mickey Mantle, and Carl Yastrzemski, whose grandson got his first MLB hit on Sunday, and was then picked off seconds later.

I'm not too familiar with the original version of 1968 Topps Game, so I'm going to assume that the red back with a nondescript playing card pattern is a faithful reproduction.

2017 Stadium Club Members Only #244 Raimel Tapia

The other Tapia card Alex sent actually included the player's name, rather than a mostly illegible signature. Sharp-eyed readers will also notice a "Members Only" seal in the lower right, just my second one from this super-rare variety. There's no serial number, but it's generally thought that there are around seven copies printed.

On top of all that, an extremely rare rookie card of a current Rockie from my favorite annual set, it also happens to be a Coors Field card. Doesn't really get much better than this.

Except of course when Tapia gets a walkoff hit in the bottom of the 11th on Memorial Day to drive in Ian Desmond.

2017 Topps Allen & Ginter Relics #FSRB-TS Trevor Story B (MEM)

Relic cards are always pretty fun, and there were a couple of those, too. Taking a quick jump back to retro-style sets, Topps gave Trevor Story a relic card in 2017 Allen & Ginter, complete with a black pinstripe. The Rockies relics I have usually feature purple pinstripes, but there have been a few minor uniform changes at 20th and Blake in the past few seasons.

I mentioned earlier that Story and Arenado reached home run milestones over the weekend. Story's first home run on Friday night was the 100th of his career, and no shortstop in history has reached that mark so quickly. That homer was a long one to the top of the bleachers. He wasted no time at all hitting his 101st, which was an opposite-field walkoff in his very next at-bat.

This is a walkoff-heavy post, perhaps a record-setting one on the blog.

2018 Topps Walmart Holiday Snowflake Relics #R-NA Nolan Arenado (MEM)

Remember what I was saying earlier about snow hitting Colorado in May? That happened earlier this month, but it didn't faze Nolan Arenado at all. His snowy home runs are quite appropriate for this wintry holiday card, a Wal-Mart exclusive. No pinstripe to be found here; instead its an all-purple swatch. Alex even sent these over in thick toploaders, tailor-made for relic cards. And let's not forget that Nolan just hit a milestone of his own, his 200th career home run on Saturday, which I had the privilege to witness.

The first time Alex sent cards was long ago, way back in 2014 on The Trading Post #3. The names may have changed, but the theme is similar. All that time ago, I was still admiring shiny cards and discussing the presence of the Refractor label on Topps card backs. I'd like to think my writing has improved, at least.

Thanks very much, Alex! And here's to more walk-off wins.

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.

The Trading Post #125: A Cracked Bat (Part 1: Shiny)

The last time Julie from A Cracked Bat sent a trade package, there was so much to cover that I had to split it up into two parts, Topps and Not Topps. Her latest trade was similar, in that there was a wealth of great cards to pick from, but this time I decided to split it up into Shiny and Not Shiny, another great way to create a two-part post that I've used before. There is a lot of ground to cover, including sets I've never seen before.

2018 Topps Chrome #80 German Marquez

We're going to need to ease into it with some borderless 2018 Chrome, because by the end, you may be seeing stars. German Marquez' base Chrome card doesn't go too over the top, it just whets your appetite a bit for what's to come.

I haven't collected many of the 2018 sets, including Chrome. That's probably why relative newcomer German Marquez is pretty under-represented in my collection outside of Topps Now. He has cemented a solid spot in a talented Rockies rotation, even doing so well in 2017 as to earn a comparison to 2002 Rookie of the Year Jason Jennings on the back of this card.

The waterslide design element pops just a little bit extra when given the Chrome treatment, and for now, this is one of the newest Topps cards around, since I have not yet purchased any of the newly-released 2019 cards. My side table is crowded enough as it is, with lots more trades, an incoming group break, part 2 of this one, as well as two entire blasters unwritten-about, 2018 Opening Day and 2018 First Pitch Big League. Those posts will come in time, with about a 20 percent chance of Marquez being on the hill the day I post.

2016 Topps Update Rainbow Foil #US256 Nolan Arenado AS

I knew this Arenado card from the 2016 All Star Game in San Diego looked familiar. The base version arrived a couple years ago from cards as i see them, but Julie graciously added this rainbow foil version to my collection. The retro Padres colors don't look any more retro, but the background and thin bars surrounding Nolan Arenado's nameplate clearly differentiate it from the base card under the right light.

Night Owl's much-hated smoke area in the upper left remains almost untouched by the effect. The rainbow shininess trails off in that area on a gradient.

What I know for sure is that the "CR" Rockies logo looks really weird on mustard yellow.

2017 Topps Gold Label Class 1 Black #93 Nolan Arenado

Julie clearly knows I like Nolan Arenado, so she added one in from 2017 Topps Gold Label. This one eluded me in Nachos Grande's First Rockin' Retro group break. It's a Class 1 card, meaning that the primary photo of the star third baseman shows him doing what he does best, and that's fielding. This card says nothing about his string of consecutive Gold Gloves, which is now up to six, but it does tell us about his consecutive 40-homer, 130-RBI seasons by the young age of 26. The only other players to accomplish that, we're told, were Chuck Klein and Jimmie Foxx, way back in the 1930s.

The photo shows him standing up, but it still could be a highlight-reel play. Just not the ones where he's thrown out runners from his knees in foul territory, often by several steps.

All three of the Rockies from the earlier group break had white backgrounds on the right side, but Sonny Gray, then of the A's, had a black area instead, just like Nolan's card. Apparently, this is a Black parallel, which led me to go back and revise the caption on Gray's card from a few months ago. I honestly did not put that together until after I scanned the cards for this post, because who knows with fractured sets?

2018 Bowman Platinum #65 Charlie Blackmon

While that revelation settles in, we'll shift to another Rockies star, Charlie Blackmon. Bowman Platinum is something I haven't seen in a while, and that's further reinforced by it being found only in Wal-Mart these days.

Topps took a weird direction with this set. It is a rainbow foil card, although I'm used to lots more shininess with this brand. I like the black border on the right, but this giant pastel-colored swoop thing completely dominates the design. It took multiple looks at this card before I even realized the photo's background is still there, as you can see someone standing on the top step of the dugout.

This set may be too niche to earn its own nickname, but it looks a lot like light trails on a long-exposure photograph. That, or a scene from Speed Racer.

And yes, the swoop is on the back too.

2018 Topps Fire Power Producers Gold Minted #PP-11 Charlie Blackmon

From what little I've seen of Topps Fire, there's a lot less actual depiction of fire than numerous sets have used over the years. Even though it's been on the market for two years, this is the first time it's entered my collection. I don't really have an excuse on why I haven't bought any, since this is a Target exclusive. And it's just the sort of thing that seems to unintentionally wind up in your shopping cart when all you needed was mayonnaise.

This yellowish-gold insert parallel is actually from the 2018 release, but Julie also threw in some 2017, which we'll see in part 2. This design doesn't really scream out to me; maybe that's why I haven't sought it out in two years. Like his Bowman Platinum card, it's also rainbow foil, but this shade of yellow is a massive distraction from that. Julie also threw in the Blue Chip variety, but this one of course caught my eye. Picture a slightly lighter shade of the Topps Bunt blue parallels and you'll get the idea.

I'm not sure where Beckett came up with its listing for this set, which I'm not using in the caption. The card number begins with "PP", consistent with the "Power Producers" name I found in a few places. Beckett declares this and its three colored varieties is part of the "Golden Sledgehammer" insert set. Granted, that is a pretty awesome name, but doesn't seem to match anything about this card.

Whatever its true name, the card back mentions Blackmon's 477-foot home run on July 9th, 2017. As is often my luck, I was at the game a day before. But what this card doesn't mention is that it happened on the same day as Kyle Freeland came within two outs of pitching a no-hitter.

Freeland was [puts on sunglasses] on fire that day.

That's to reinforce the pun, but we might really need those sunglasses soon.

2018 Donruss Optic Shock #89 Charlie Blackmon

Donruss Optic is still going strong in 2018, and they're even starting to get fancy with their shiny parallels. I am pretty sure this is the Shock parallel, but I am even less an expert in Donruss Optic than Topps Gold Label, so feel free to correct me. It's actually pretty mesmerizing, because there appear to be shiny dots that move around when you tilt the card. And unbelievably, it scanned pretty accurately.

This design with hints of 1984 Donruss appears to show the center fielder playing in St. Louis. That's my best guess, since it looks like there's just a tiny bit of the Cardinals logo painted on the back wall of the dugout. It might be a logo that Panini missed, though they did a fine job on Blackmon's uniform.

He had a great year in 2017, becoming the first player to lead the Majors in hits, runs, triples, and total bases in the same year. To put a feather in that cap, he also won the batting title.

2017 Donruss Optic #53 Raimel Tapia RR (RC)

Optic was a little bit more in check the prior year as far as parallels go, and that year the set used the familiar upward-sloping design that appears to carry behind the photograph. This year's design is most like 1991 in that regard, and the 1986 design used a similar angle but narrower lines. Panini has a wealth of designs to use if they keep this brand active in the future. It's only a matter of time before we see little baseball bats at the bottom facing right one year, then left the next. Or is it left, then right? I can never remember.

Raimel Tapia got the Rated Rookie treatment in 2017, and the card back describes his first career hit on September 2, 2016, his first of ten that season at the young age of 22. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be many times that, but Panini did a pretty good job describing that highlight in less than a hundred. They even put the right name to the card, something the broadcast crew flubbed at first.

2016 Bowman Chrome Draft #BDC-63 Garrett Hampson

With the departure of DJ LeMahieu, Garrett Hampson may be in line for some more playing time in 2019, depending on where Daniel Murphy appears on the defensive chart. He's a promising rookie, although he drew the short straw when the Rockies acquired Matt Holliday in late 2018. They sent him down to make room for the fan favorite's return, but called him right back up once rosters expanded in September, and even kept him on the roster for the Postseason. In fact, he scored one of just two runs the Rockies managed to plate during the entire 2018 NLDS.

At this point in his career, he's a perfect Bowman guy, but he just got his first real Rookie Card in 2019 Topps Series 1. Bowman's scouting report on this Chrome Draft card is that he's a "scrappy competitor" who can "leg out infield hits". That may be, but his first MLB hit was a towering RBI double off the wall in Arizona. That didn't miss being a home run by much, and Topps already mentioned the hit on his 2019 card.

Incidentally, his name came up during a recent conversation I had with Big Shep's Cards, whose friend's cousin is Garrett Hampson.

2017 Topps Chrome Prism Refractors #92 Trevor Story

Clearly, Julie has tapped a rich vein of 2017 Chrome cards, because she sent me a slightly different version of this Trevor Story card last year. That was the regular refractor, this one is the slightly rarer Prism Refractor. The "spotlight" design on the normal refractors isn't used here, instead using lots of tiny facets in the background design, while at the same time allowing a clearer image of the dugout in the background.

I spent some time last year gushing that Topps labeled the refractor as a refractor, but this one is missing that note. I guess it's obvious enough that it doesn't need to be differentiated from the normal chrome card. I don't think I noticed the "Chrome" lettering in the banner before, which is a little redundant with the usual Topps Chrome logo.

2018 Topps Fire Green #54 Trevor Story /199

Like me, Topps isn't above using puns. The card back on this trippy 2017 Topps Fire parallel tells us that "Story was en fuego" at the beginning of the 2016 season, having hit seven home runs by the time his career was six games old.

What we're looking at here is the green parallel, and I guess green is the dominant color here, but red is really giving it a run for its money. As are numerous other colors. This wouldn't be out of place in 1995 Fleer, and is probably the closest thing yet to what we'd see if Jackson Pollock designed a baseball card.

There's a /199 serial number on the back, which is also the only place we see Trevor's first name.

2017 Topps Triple Threads #49 Carlos Gonzalez

We're going to take a little break from the contemporary art of Topps Fire parallels and return to a more traditional design with clean lines. Julie has sent me Triple Threads cards of Carlos Gonzalez before, too. I have no idea where she gets all these, but I'm glad she's on my side.

Despite endless trade rumors, Carlos Gonzalez reached free agency after his time with the Rockies, and with the cold state of free agent signings, his place for 2019 has yet to be determined. I'd love to see him return to right field at 20th and Blake, (well, right field is more like 22nd), but the free agent market is weird right now. Things are also weird in his home country of Venezuela right now, although he resides in this beautiful home in Orlando.

We're about to leave the modern era and return to the Blake Street Bomber era. If anything, the cards are just going to get stranger.

1997 Upper Deck Star Attractions #SA14 Larry Walker

I almost forgot about die-cuts. This one really isn't all that shiny compared to some others, but it has a pretty unique look. The background is blurred in a way that looks like a still from a rotoscope movie. You can still see the dugout and the first few rows of fans, but it's a different style of blur than you normally get from a camera.

The die cut itself is fairly simple, although it reminds me that there are relatively few die-cut designs that are so symmetrical. And the photo is cropped perfectly to contain Larry Walker, not omitting any of his batting stance and the power he's generating with his back leg.

Most of Larry Walker's cards from this era mention his stellar MVP 1997 season, although Upper Deck lamented on this insert that "another season went by without a Triple Crown winner". He fell a little short on RBIs, and trailed in batting average to the great Tony Gwynn, but did manage to lead the NL in home runs.

1998 Studio Hit Parade #2 Larry Walker /5000

Studio was no different in 1998. They got a little more in-depth than the usual Triple Crown statistics, pointing out that Walker's .720 slugging percentage was fifth-best in NL history. That number was miles ahead of the AL leader Ken Griffey Jr. at .646, who took home that league's MVP.

Sportflix and Studio both used Hit Parade as an insert set before Topps got around to it some time later, and Donruss even decided this one of Larry Walker was worth limiting to 5,000 copies. I am in possession of #3,886. The surface is what's known as etched foil, and up close, it basically looks like the ridges of a fingerprint.

1996 Ultra Power Plus #11 Larry Walker

Our final card has a very similar etched surface, but lots more color. At first glance, I thought this was yet another mid-90s Stadium Club subset that eluded me all these years, but it's actually from 1996 Fleer Ultra. Those who collected 2014 Topps Power Players should find the colorful concentric circles on this similarly-named Power Plus insert set somewhat familiar.

Baseball terminology has changed a bit over the years. The card back says that Larry Walker is a "strong two-way player", and then proceeds to tell us about his home runs and steals, as well as his outfield arm. That could be taken a couple ways, that he has both speed and power, or that he excels at both offense and defense. Today, of course, with the arrival of Shohei Ohtani, that term has evolved to mean players who can both hit and pitch, perhaps the two most divergent skills in the sport. Matt Davidson's name is coming up frequently in those discussions, and many scouts are looking for it in young players.

I could never see Larry Walker as a pitcher, but the two photo selections of this card give us a glimpse of what that might look like. Maybe, with a design like this, it's from a parallel universe where that did indeed happen.

I always learn a lot from Julie's trade packages, and in part 2, there are still more sets that are making their debut in my collection.