The Last Minute Group Break (Part 1: Rockies)

Way back in June, Chris of Nachos Grande, easily one of the most active and prolific bloggers in our community, ran another one of his group breaks. I've taken part before, but I had considered sitting this one out. He had fifteen slots open, good for one selected team and one random bonus team. Based on the products in this break, I didn't really mind if I missed out, and I figured that was fairly likely given he only had to convince fifteen collectors.

On offer this time around was 2017 Topps Archives, 2017 Topps Bunt, and 2017 Diamond Kings, along with his usual smattering of bonuses. Other than Archives, I wasn't entirely wowed by the products in the break. But the slots didn't fill up like I expected, and I decided to jump in to beat the buzzer. And even though we had just done a trade, I know his bonuses and throw-ins are always worthwhile.

Of course, I picked the Rockies, but by chance, I also ended up with the Diamondbacks. We'll be seeing that matchup on TBS in the NL Wild Card Game just hours from now, so this seemed like a perfect time to finally dig into the results of the break.

2017 Diamond Kings #105 Charlie Blackmon SP

I don't know much about Diamond Kings, and if Chris hadn't helpfully put this in a penny sleeve and written "Short Print" on it in black Sharpie, I wouldn't have had any idea. It's about what you'd expect, though perhaps with a bit more of a watercolor look than in past years. That red splotch toward the bottom is actually a distorted Cardinals batboy, as we can see on the back. A zoomed-out version of the artwork without the watercolor theme is found on the back, making it easy to see what's what. Panini put an elaborate frame around that image, just like what you'd see in an art museum.

And all that before I really noticed that there was no logo on Blackmon's helmet. Maybe they actually kind of know what they're doing.

2017 Diamond Kings Aurora #A-18 Nolan Arenado

This loud Arenado card is an insert from the Aurora set, no relation to the old Pacific brand. If you turn it sideways, it could be a national flag of a similarly colorful country, somewhere in the Caribbean perhaps. Panini also threw in a little gold foil to go along with the familiar playing-card surface. It really is quite different. I think Donruss was trying for something like this with some of their early-90s designs, but the execution is really quite good here.

Arenado fell a little short of the 40-homer mark this card praised him for reaching in back-to-back seasons, but he still hit the 130-RBI mark for the third straight year, something only a handful of Hall of Fame-caliber players have done. Giancarlo Stanton put two more across than Nolan did in 2017, preventing Arenado from being the first to lead the league in three straight seasons while also getting to the 130-RBI mark. But he's still a record setter and could very well earn his fifth straight Gold Glove.

2017 Topps Archives #256 Ian Desmond

This might be my first card of Ian Desmond as a Rockie. He missed about half of the team's games this year due to injury, but has still made an impact in Denver. And he picked up where Brandon Barnes left off on the tattoo front. Part of the Rockies' stacked-as-usual outfield, Desmond is shown at the plate, with his bat extending past the border of the 1992 Topps design, one that somehow doesn't "feel" like an Archives card. The card stock is definitely a little different in Archives this year.

1992 Topps was the first flagship set to be printed on white card stock, a major change that not everyone thinks should have been made. But it did allow Topps to reliably print photographs on the back, and 1992 gave us those very thin panorama shots of the team's home stadium. Coors Field had barely broken ground in 1992, and the Rockies and Marlins had yet to play a game. So this marks one of the few appearances of Coors Field in in the stretched 1992 format on the back, and while Topps did a pretty good job capturing the sold-out park, none of the iconic scoreboard in left field made it on, nor any of the picturesque sky behind it. That scoreboard, by the way, will undergo extensive renovations this winter, to go along with the popular Rooftop patio in right-center.

Now that I think about it, less than ten parks that made an appearance on the back of 1992 Topps are still around. Not even Camden Yards, which kicked off the flurry of retro-style ballparks around the league, made it on. There have been four new teams since 1992, but over twenty new stadiums. And the Braves have gone through two! It'll be interesting to see 2041's Topps Heritage set, and what the stadium situation looks like then.

2017 Topps Archives Peach #37 Jon Gray /199

Jon Gray, the probable starter for tonight's Wild Card game, was one of my hits in this break. This salmon-bordered parallel (Topps calls it Peach) of the 1960 design is numbered to just 199 copies, and Chris managed to pull one just like it of David Dahl on my behalf. Those pulls are the highlights of the break for me, at least as far as odds go.

The card back, complete with cartoon, contains the serial number, orange and black printing, and and some season highlights, including his magnificent 16-strikeout game on September 17th, 2016.

Here's hoping his performance tonight is closer to that and less like the first-inning jitters he's sometimes known for.

2017 Topps Archives '16 Retro Original #RO-19 Nolan Arenado

I got a insert card or two, and this one of Nolan is termed a "Retro Original". Sort of like all these ballparks we have now. It's vaguely reminiscent of a few different Topps designs cobbled together, such as 1986 and 1959 on the front, and maybe a bit of 1977 on the back with all that green. It even reminds me of the 2017 Allen & Ginter set, though a bit more 1960s and less late-19th century. I didn't even notice the facsimile signature, a longtime Topps fixture, until several looks at the card.

2017 Topps Archives #136 Rob Manfred

The final design used in 2017 Archives was 1982's "Hockey Sticks" design, and Chris decided I was worthy of getting a couple of MLB Commissioner cards. This one, of course, and also Bart Giamatti's card from 1990 Donruss.

Current Commissioner Rob Manfred seems open to bringing MLB further into the future, hinting that he's open to expansion, pushing for extended netting after a recent incident at Yankee Stadium, and is heavily concerned with the speed of games, introducing the rather silly intentional walk rule, despite still letting the Yankees play the Red Sox in their regular Sunday night 4-hour marathons.

Nick wrote all about this card last week, and I think that Archives as a set is obscure enough to let the Commissioner slip in. If anything, it marks that Major League Baseball is in a period of change, and it serves as a reminder that the league is, first and foremost, a business.

2017 Topps Bunt #132 Carlos Gonzalez

I've seen a few arrive via trade, but the value pack I purchased at Target was devoid of Rockies. I probably got the whole team set thanks to this break, and the print quality on these cards is ridiculously sharp. For a bargain product, I'm certainly impressed. I guess I didn't really notice until I saw this side-by-side with 2016 Bunt, from which Chris threw in a couple extras. I'd say it's pretty much on par with a Topps Now card, and the color coding with these Rockies is just gorgeous!

I guess the only critique I have is that the back could be jazzed up a bit, but if you don't want to spend big on Topps products, it's a solid offering.

That about does it for the official group break items, but anyone who's taken part in his breaks knows that there's plenty more where that came from.

2004 Topps Total Production #TP8 Todd Helton

I always liked the idea of Topps Total, but I never really got into it. During the few years this set existed, I wasn't buying a whole lot of new product. Mainly I was trying to decipher the fallout from the craziness that was the late-'90s. Shiny and Topps Total definitely occupy different compartments in my collecting mind, but here's an insert that checks both boxes. I had no idea. it's faint, much more so than 1998 Pacific Omega Online, but the background design is definitely going for a printed circuit board look.

Interestingly, the card back mentions Helton's OPS, which is helpfully defined as on-base plus slugging. It was just a couple years after the A's Moneyball season and the sudden adoption of Sabermetrics, and this is the earliest Topps card I've seen that mentions one of the new statistical categories. Helton had a significant falloff later in his career, but at the time, his career OPS trailed only Ruth, Williams, and Gehrig, according to the card.

1994 SP #169 Walt Weiss

It seems like every time I buy into one of Chris's group breaks, I end up with some 1994 SP. The shiny copper gets me every time, and I can't get enough of that gold hologram. I don't know where he gets them all, but I'll take it.

Walt Weiss certainly looked a lot younger in his playing days, compared to his recent managerial stint with the Rockies. The photo on the back shows Weiss flashing the sign of the horns, indicating to his outfielders that there are two outs. Just like I did in little league! "Infield, tell the outfield!", our coach would say. And I was usually in the outfield, except during the minimum of two innings when each kid had to play an infield position.

On the front, Weiss is in Mile High Stadium, with what looks like the Braves logo displayed on the outfield wall (it's tough to tell on the scan), back when teams all over the league had logos of their competitors plastered all over the place.

This might have been pretty early in the 1994 season, maybe even before the Rockies got their first win against the Braves, their old division nemesis. Yes, the Braves used to be in the NL West, and I had always assumed that was because they used to be based in Milwaukee but never had a chance to be realigned until the six-division system was created. But no, the Braves were already in Atlanta by the time East and West divisions were created, meaning they had almost a solid quarter-century of schlepping out to California from Atlanta on a regular basis.

And I thought the Astros in the AL West was questionable.

Maybe that's why it took me so long to figure that one out. Houston's definitely not in the West. At least not like Seattle is.

2012 Bowman Chrome Draft Draft Picks #BDPP113 Scott Oberg

Bowman Chrome isn't quite as shiny as that copper masterpiece, but this card is notable for a different reason. The subject, Scott Oberg, is actually a Major Leaguer, which is rather unusual for a Bowman card. The reliever appeared in a whopping 66 games this season, and got the Rockies out of a few dicey situations.

Not bad for a 15th-round pick from UConn.

2012 Topps Update #US123 Jamie Moyer

Unlike his uniform number, Jamie Moyer wasn't quite 50 when he won on April 17th, 2012, becoming the oldest player to ever earn a Win in the Major Leagues. He even broke his own record about a month later, just a couple days before turning 49 1/2. Both wins came in divisional games at Coors Field, and he had a way better final season than Roy Oswalt.

Rockies are rarely featured on the checklist cards. Helton's retirement got a card in 2014, but that's the only other one that comes to mind. But unlike Helton's checklist, Moyer's card is properly color-coded to fit in with the rest of his teammates. And this is not quite a meta-checklist, where the card's number appears on the card itself, but Jamie Moyer's actual card number shows up about halfway down the third column.

2001 Upper Deck #261 Ben Petrick

Ben Petrick got a card in 2001 Upper Deck, striking a similar pose to Ian Desmond's follow-through. He's swinging a big bat, and there was a ton of white space on the vertical back of the card, plenty of room to fill with a long career. However, as we know now, it was not to be. Unbeknownst to the Rockies, he was battling Parkinson's disease from the young age of 22. That he was able to put together a Major League career of any length while contending with that is amazing enough, let alone five seasons at the grueling position of catcher.

And I still remember him as "the guy whose autograph I almost got."

2000 Fleer Tradition #35 Pedro Astacio

Even though he's in the career top ten in most Rockies pitching categories, I don't find too many Pedro Astacio cards. He's in the top three for strikeouts, and is at the very top for complete games and strikeout-to-walk ratio, but on the other hand, no Rockie has ever hit more batters or allowed more home runs.

Also, in looking over those stats, I noticed that late reliever and occasional closer Steve Reed was finally knocked off his perch on the Rockies top-ten list for Wins. Tyler Chatwood earned his 34th win in mid-September, ending one of the more astonishing statistical oddities out of the Rockies bullpen.

The blue background on his 2000 Fleer Tradition card is probably better-suited to his Dodger days, so it's maybe not the best selection to debut him on the blog. I'll keep an eye out for another card, perhaps one that better shows him in action. Or at least one with more purple.

1997 Collector's Choice Teams #CR11 Ellis Burks

At first, I assumed this was a duplicate, but in looking a bit more closely, it's actually from a team set that Collector's Choice put out in 1997. Only ten teams got that treatment, obviously including the Rockies. For some reason, the Rockies seem to be pretty well-represented in this type of offering, including both years of Topps Team Stadium Club. But I've never seen a Topps buyback card.

The "Did You Know?" fact on the back is about Eric Young and the four times he's led off a game with a home run, which was then a Rockies record. I don't know for certain, but I feel confident that Charlie Blackmon had to have passed that record by now, if for no other reason than he set the all-time record for RBIs as a leadoff hitter this season, with 103.

2014 Topps Heritage #404 Charlie Blackmon

Speaking of Charlie Blackmon, when was the last time you saw him without his trademark beard? Well, other than his rookie card from 2011 Topps Update, one you may have run across in search of Mike Trout's from the same set? 2014 was his breakout year, the same year as this 1965-themed Heritage set. I saw his 6-for-6 game on Opening Day 2014, which was also the first day The Rooftop was open at Coors Field. He's only gotten better since then, helping put the Rockies in the playoffs for the first time in eight years, and making a pretty strong case for the NL MVP award.

2009 Upper Deck #621 Chris Iannetta

2009 Upper Deck was one of Chris's bonus products in the group break. Catcher Chris Iannetta fell out of one of those packs, who was a Rockie from 2006 to 2011, a timeframe that spanned both their last two Postseason appearances, but Iannetta didn't have a Postseason appearance in either year.

That does not leave me with a good feeling. I feel like that may come back to haunt the Rockies, because Iannetta is now a Diamondback, after finally getting a taste of October baseball in 2014 with the Angels.

Or maybe it will be Daniel Descalso, or Jorge De La Rosa.

The Rockies and Diamondbacks seem inextricably linked. The two teams even share a spring training facility. And they've swapped a lot of players over the years. Gerardo Parra or could just as easily sink the D-backs tonight. Or Mark Reynolds.

After being swept in the 2007 NLCS by the Rockies, I'm sure the Diamondbacks can't wait to take the field to try to get their revenge. They'll have their ace on the mound, as will the Rockies.

I can't wait!

The Trading Post #94: Cardboard Clubhouse

Adam was a fairly common name when I was growing up. Starting in the first year or two of elementary school and throughout my public school career, there were lots of Adams. Adam W., Adam T., Adam G., Adam B., and of course myself as Adam K. There's even another Adam K. at my current place of employment, so our colleagues have to come up with other ways to differentiate us, primarily that the other Adam K. is a talented dancer and soccer player, of which I am neither.

Even in Boy Scouts, there were two Adam S.'s in my patrol, leading to this particular exchange shouted between tents one dark night at a mountain campsite:

"Hey, where's Adam?"
"Which Adam?"
"S!"
"Which S?"
[frustrated pause] "<other S.'s last name>!"

Even in the Cardsphere, there are a couple of Adam S.'s, entirely different from the ones I knew in my Boy Scout days. Giants fan Adam (aka arpsmith) writes "ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession", and Adam Sanders writes Cardboard Clubhouse, the sender of this particular PWE.

2010 Topps #51 Eric Young Jr (RC)

The Adam S. in question, a Reds fan, found this Rockies card of Eric Young, Jr. sliding into home plate at Coors Field against a Cincinnati Reds catcher. We might have enough information here to date this card. Ryan Hanigan was the regular catcher for the Reds in 2009, and Cincinnati visited Denver in early September 2009. Young, Jr. scored multiple times during that series, but the most likely candidate is September 9th, 2009. Eric Young, Jr. got on base to lead off the third inning, advanced to third on a Carlos Gonzalez single (wow, CarGo was a Rockie way back in 2009?), and scored on a sacrifice fly by Seth Smith.

He is facing away from the catcher, but that sliding position is fairly dangerous, the way his spikes are up like that. It's a good Nike ad, at least, but it's probably best that the pitcher wasn't nearby.

2015 Topps Rainbow Foil #94 Tommy Kahnle

Tommy Kahnle is now part of the Chicago White Sox organization. I might even get to see this ex-Rockie when the White Sox come to town in July, as part of my quest to see every Major League team in person. Even though Kahnle didn't make a huge splash for the Rockies (originally drafted as a Yankee), I'm still glad to have this Rainbow Foil parallel from 2015 Topps.

The stucco set (is that what we settled on calling it?) already seems like a distant memory, but if it's to be the last-ever bordered Topps base set, then I think they did a great job with it.

1995 Stadium Club #109 Doug Million

That's about it for the new cards, as the rest were mostly from the 1990s. 1995 Topps Stadium Club introduced a new brand logo that would stick around for a couple years, and it appears on this Draft Picks subset card. I've written about Doug Million's sad story before, and this promising lefty never had a chance to pitch in the Majors before his tragic death. The Rockies pitching staff is facing something similar today, as starter Chad Bettis will likely be missing most of the 2017 season as he is treated for testicular cancer.

I hope that I'll be seeing Chad Bettis cards long into the future, regardless of which team he's on.

1995 Stadium Club #94 Walt Weiss

Walt Weiss also got a card in that same Topps Stadium Club set, which was generally being referred to as TSC during this period. I can't quite tell if he's sliding into third or diving back to first base to avoid a pickoff attempt. Probably the former, unless the first baseman is playing far behind the runner. Either way, we can see that the former Rockies manager wore his cap underneath his batting helmet. I don't see anyone do this anymore, but it wasn't that uncommon in the 1990s. When I played my two seasons of little league, I used to do exactly that when I strolled up to the plate. Always wanted to be like the big guys. Unfortunately for me, that is slightly more difficult when your helmet has ear flaps on both sides. I guess I just didn't have the leverage at the age of ten to demand a right-handed batting helmet. But a switch-hitter in the Majors got a choice of either.

1995 Collector's Choice SE #260 Dante Bichette FT

1995 Collector's Choice SE came out in the final month of 1994, and the blue foil made it one of my favorites at the time. I have seen these Fantasy Team subset cards countless times, but I never really looked that closely at them. This was a decade before I knew anything about fantasy baseball, but the back of this card gives a look at per-position fantasy rankings, based on the standard 5-category scoring. Those 5 categories were based on statistics that you'd find in a box score in the newspaper, since this was long before any sort of live scoring you could check on an automatically refreshing webpage.

Strangely, the column for batting average shows a zero in front of the usual three-digit number, as in 0.284. More strangely, there is no column for runs scored, one of the key statistics in 5-category scoring. And perhaps strangest of all, Dante Bichette's fantasy stats don't even appear on the back of his own card. Luis Polonia is at the top of the AL outfielder rankings, and Derrick May atop the NL rankings. Rockies outfielder Mike Kingery shows up midway down the NL ranks, but Bichette is nowhere to be found.

That seems to be an error, as I checked the back of several other cards in this subset. Greg Maddux, Craig Biggio, and Jeff Bagwell are all listed at the top of their league table, in bold no less. Bichette and his stellar seasons as a Blake Street Bomber surely put him as a top-ranked outfielder. Which is pretty much where Carlos Gonzalez and Charlie Blackmon can be found today.

1995 Donruss #383 Roberto Mejia

Continuing our flashback to 1995, Roberto Mejia, an expansion draft pick, appears in this 1995 Donruss set. The front is pretty standard for a mid-1990s card, with a full-bleed photo and lots of illegible silver foil. But I do think I finally know whose batting helmet Charlie Hayes was wearing on his 1994 Upper Deck card.

1995 Donruss #383 Roberto Mejia (Reverse)

Over twenty years later, the back of 1995 Donruss clearly influenced the 2016 Topps Bunt set, with its huge team logo, a touch of color coding, and a general gray color.

Fake-finger-gun back at you, Roberto. I'm sure that was a nice throw.

1994 Score #528 David Nied

David Nied, the Rockies first pick in the Expansion Draft, was featured in the fragile 1994 Score set. The little yellow 1993 Rookie label isn't quite accurate, as Nied pitched three games for the Braves before the Rockies and Marlins poached rosters from the rest of the Major Leagues.

This photo is probably from 1993, making the blurry foreground catcher likely either Joe Girardi or Danny Sheaffer, both of whom also got cards in 1994 Score. Surprisingly, for as much 1994 Score as I collected when it was new, and for as many early Rockies cards as I get via trade, this Nied looks to be a newcomer to my collection.

Thanks again to Adam S. for sending this Adam K. some great Rockies cards, and I hope he enjoys the upcoming baseball season, which kicks off one week from today!

The Trading Post #89: The Chronicles of Fuji

Fuji recently vacated the Athletics' spot in the #supertraders group, but that didn't stop him from sending an awesome trade package in December. He even took the time to put everything in penny sleeves for safe keeping. It was one of those trades where I had to narrow things down quite a bit to keep this from being a 20-card post, as I was dazzled by a lot of what he sent.

1994 SP Holoviews #10 Andres Galarraga

At first glance, this looks like a recent card with a hologram sticker autograph. But it's actually from all the way back in 1994. Upper Deck went all in with the hologram technology for this insert set, though there is no Upper Deck hologram anywhere on the back. The card has a Topps Chrome-esque curl, but the silver area at the bottom shows the Big Cat's 3D face on the right, and a bunch of SP logos coming out of some clouds on the left. They give the design a bit more of a 3D illusion by superimposing Galarraga's photograph over the hologram.

The card number looks like a fraction: 10 over 38. I was wondering if this was some kind of a fractured set, as I haven't seen this one before, Then I thought it might be something to do with the uniform number, but that was clearly not correct, as he wore #14. It's simply card 10 out of 38, the total size of this insert set. Simple.

1997 SPx #SPX24 Andres Galarraga

The Big Cat shows up again on a similar card a few years later, but this one is die-cut. The write up mentions that in early 1997, he became the all-time home runs leader among Venezuelans, with 252. He'd end up with just shy of 400, still a monster number. And he only played five seasons as a Rockie, so he had plenty of power outside of Denver.

There are lots of holograms on this one, even more than in 1994. The areas of the X contain a bunch of SPX logos, and the arc in the middle contains a nearly identical headshot of Galarraga against a backdrop of Rockies logos. It's even got a bit of color to it, both in Galarraga's skin tone and in the purple areas of the team logo. And there's even the familiar Upper Deck hologram on the back, this time in gold. 

Shiny at its best.

2011 Topps 60 #T60-11 Troy Tulowitzki

Topps 60 is one of those giant insert sets that I've been casually chasing for a while now. Coincidentally, I'd estimate that I've completed about sixty percent of it. This one of Tulo in that familiar batting motion documents his slugging percentage as a cleanup hitter. Between 2005 and 2010, Tulo was second overall behind Miguel Cabrera. And Tulowitzki didn't even play in 2005, and was a late-season callup in 2006. So while this doesn't quite give us an apples-to-apples comparison, Tulo was doing exactly what he was supposed to in the #4 slot.

The back of the card gives the top ten players in this stat. There are some familiar names on here, like Bonds, Berkman, Fielder, and others. And tied for 6th was Astros third baseman Morgan Ensberg. He had a relatively short-lived career, but put together an all-star season in 2005. I even picked him for my fantasy team one year (probably the year after). He didn't have lasting power, but he was definitely part of the conversation for a while.

2011 Topps Diamond Duos Series 2 #DD-22 Troy Tulowitzki / Ubaldo Jimenez

Tulowitzki's post-swing pose finally made it onto a card, one of the two-player Diamond Duo cards, another large 2011 insert set. He appears with teammate Ubaldo Jimenez, neither of whom are even in the National League right now, let alone on the Rockies. The paragraph on the back talks more about Tulo's defensive performance, so it's a little odd that Topps used a batting shot here, especially given that he appeared in this insert set three times across two series.

The back also offers a statistics comparison between Tulowitzki and Jimenez, except comparing a pitcher's stats to a position player's doesn't seem that relevant. For example, Tulo had 338 RBIs by then, compared to Ubaldo's 655 strikeouts. 

2011 Topps Target Red Diamond #RDT-12 Carlos Gonzalez

2011 marked Topps' first year all by itself in the baseball card marketplace in over 30 years. That pesky Upper Deck wasn't making even unlicensed baseball cards anymore, and Topps took the opportunity of their reinstated monopoly and their 60th anniversary to churn out bunches of insert sets. The previous two I've come reasonably close to completing, but this one I've never seen before. It fits with the rest of 2011's diamond theme, but this is a Target-exclusive insert set. I wasn't buying cards regularly at that time, but I'm a little surprised I've never seen one turn up in a discount box. Usually the red- and blue-bordered ones stand out in discount boxes full of Topps base.

This insert set spanned 30 cards over two series, and contained a pretty even mixture of active players and retired greats. Carlos' two-homer performance on August 29th, 2010 is the subject of the paragraph on the back. That sounded familiar, making me wonder if I was at that game. But I wasn't. He just does that sort of thing a lot.

2008 Upper Deck Heroes Beige #55 Jeff Francis /299

Speaking of Upper Deck, here's a familiar-looking card of 17-game winner Jeff Francis from the well-liked Baseball Heroes set. I've shown the base version of this card before. While the base card is described as a "sand" color, this is the beige parallel, serial numbered to 299. The difference in color between the two is somewhat noticeable when placed side-by-side, but trying to recall it from memory would be a challenge. It would definitely be easy to skip over if you didn't know just what you were looking for.

Like other cards in this set, and that purple Todd Helton card from my previous post, the background has a matte finish, while the photo and logo are glossy. And it's definitely reminiscent of 1959 Topps. More on that later.

2014 Topps Update Power Players #PPA-TT Troy Tulowitzki

I've seen Carlos Gonzalez's card from 2014 Topps Power Players numerous times before, including this very trade package. but this is my first copy of Troy Tulowitzki's card from that set. The "wormhole", as I previously described it, is the same shape but uses different colors. And Tulo gets a real action shot as opposed to CarGo's posed image. There's also a pattern of dots in the background, which reminds me of what you see on Panini Prizm's Pulsar parallels.

Say that ten times fast.

1999 Topps Power Brokers #PB9 Vinny Castilla

I have to wonder if Topps looked through the archives and found inspiration for Power Players in this similar Power Brokers set from 1999. This one is shinier, but the overall color and design is pretty similar. Enough of the blue wall peeks through the distortion to indicate that they're in Shea Stadium, but between the action shot, blocky font, and a pair of electrodes, there's a lot going on here. There's even a rather large nuclear symbol on the back. To be honest, I didn't even realize this was a die-cut until I viewed it several times. It's a clear indication of history repeating itself, which happens more than you'd think in this hobby.

1995 Stadium Club Virtual Reality #204 Marvin Freeman

In 1995, the sport of baseball, and its related card industry, was trying to recover from a disastrous strike that cut the 1994 season short. Topps came up with the idea to include computer-simulated statistics on some 1995 cards, such as Topps Cyberstats, and also this Virtual Reality partial parallel set in Stadium Club. Freeman had 10 wins in 1994 as the Rockies ace, but Topps thought it likely that he'd win another four for a total of 14.

1995 Stadium Club Virtual Reality #204 Marvin Freeman (Reverse)

No one really talks about it, but the the back of 1995 Stadium Club wasn't that different from the thermal camera look that Fleer famously produced in 1995. The hobby went to some strange places that lasted for the rest of the decade.

Virtual Reality, and the Web itself were just getting off the ground in 1994, barely past the concept stage. Over twenty years later, Virtual Reality still isn't quite mainstream, but it's certainly moving that direction, and rapidly. Perhaps in another 20 years, cards (or something like the Bunt app) will have an actual VR component, allowing us to see video highlights at a glance.

Hopefully it's more like that and not another prediction of what might have happened without a labor dispute.

1995 Topps Embossed Golden Idols #112 Walt Weiss

Shiny cards usually look generally silver, like a mirror. It's fairly uncommon for the thing to just be straight, bling-y gold. But that's just what Topps did with the parallels for Embossed, adding to the oddness of 1995. I haven't seen a ton of Topps Embossed in general, and apparently these are one per pack parallels that took Topps Gold to its logical endgame.

It's a very texturey card. Weiss' images are raised from the card surface both front and back, and each of the concentric layers of the border has a different pattern. Furthest out are baseballs, further in are diagonal ridges, horizontal ridges, what looks like ice cream sprinkles, etc.... Lost in all that is some letting at the bottom that reminds us that Weiss was the 1988 Rookie of the Year, and there's a little more detail about that on the non-gold back.

1995 Score Gold Rush #338 Andres Galarraga

Beginning a transition from gold to green, Score's Gold Rush parallel set in 1995 gives us a shot of Andres Galarraga signing autographs. I think. Many ballplayers were sporting shades like this in the mid-1990s, but Galarraga did not go down the goatee route, the 1990s equivalent of the big, bushy beards we commonly see today.

Score also used a different, darker shade of gold on the border than Weiss' card. This one looks less like actual gold and more like a slightly reddish alloy. The foil is a tiny bit dinged up on the edges, as whatever Score used for this product, I've always found to be easy to nick.

2008 Topps Heritage Chrome #C50 Matt Holliday /1959

Moving fully into the green color theme, Matt Holliday's Chrome parallel from 2008 Topps Heritage is serial numbered to 1959, matching the design of that year. Remember that Jeff Francis card? Now it should be pretty obvious where Upper Deck got its idea for Baseball Heroes. Not that a circle is a hugely unusual shape or anything, but the diameter and placement are almost identical.

Being from 2008, this is from the year after the Rockies went to the World Series and Holliday won MVP honors in the NLCS against the Diamondbacks. He also led a bunch of categories in 2007, including two Triple Crown categories. They didn't mention his memorable slide at the end of the 2007 regular season (hi, Padres fans!), but any green card always has a welcome spot in my collection.

1994 Finest Refractors #72 Joe Girardi

1994 Finest is right up there as my all-time favorite green set, with 2013 Topps Emerald close behind. Joe Girardi, now manager of the Yankees, spent a few seasons behind the plate as a Rockie, and even though he missed about half of the 1993 season due to injury, he still earned a spot in the Topps Finest set. Not only that, but this is the refractor version, a term we all know now but weren't so familiar with back then. 

This isn't nearly as rare as refractors from the debut 1993 Finest set, but it's still a great card, and a fairly scarce variation of one of my favorite sets. I have none of the refractors from 1993 in my collection, and only Kevin Stocker's from 1994, besides this. It was a trade package full of shiny cards from start to finish, covering all the great periods of Rockies history.

Thanks, Fuji!

The Trading Post #61: Night Owl Cards

Well, it finally happened. I completed a trade with the great Night Owl Cards. He is a legend in our community, and I don't know of another (active) blogger with such universal appeal. Granted, as a Dodger blogger, he's not much of a fan of the rest of the NL West, but he nearly always has interesting things to say about our little hobby. And I know no bigger fan of 1975 Topps.

1995 Flair #344 Dante Bichette

1975 predated the Rockies by quite some time, and even Hockey's Colorado Rockies by a year, the franchise that is now the New Jersey Devils. But baseball's Rockies have been around for long enough to have a wealth of great baseball cards. And with the rise of retro sets, finding Rockies on old designs isn't that tough anymore, as we'll see later.

The more I look at these Flair cards, the more I see where Topps Gold Label got its inspiration. In fact, Flair pretty much singlehandedly invented this type of super-premium card printed on thick card stock. Topps Museum Collection, Triple Threads, Panini Immaculate Collection, and plenty of others can trace their lineage to this brand right here. 1995 was a couple years into Flair's run, but they had the formula down by then. This one's still thin enough to fit in a standard top-loader, but it's as sturdy as a sheet of metal compared to its competition in 1995.

2009 Upper Deck Icons #41 Garrett Atkins

Icons is one of the numerous sets UD released throughout much of the '00s, but this is the first time I can remember seeing it. They were certainly going after player collectors with all those products, but with more innovation and product development than just a bunch of colored parallels. UD became big on color-coding once they exhausted their supply of copper, and that much purple behind Atkins' batting helmet strongly reinforces that this is a Rockies card. Atkins looks a little late on this swing, but he's clearly swinging for the fences here.

That was something I remember the Rockies doing a lot of in their last couple playoff appearances, especially once they reached the World Series, and in 2009. Later in the game, everyone who got up to the plate was clearly trying to hit a home run, and it usually resulted in a lot of strikeouts. Just putting the ball in play and getting guys on base is enough, as the Padres reminded the Rockies of last weekend, scoring 29 runs in the first two games of the series.

2004 Fleer Ultra #293 Vinny Castilla

Night Owl sent cards from all throughout the Rockies' existence, including this one, from Vinny Castilla's second of three stints as a Rockie. Vinny looks like he just hit one out, and we can see catcher Charles Johnson (and I believe Royce Clayton on the left) waiting to congratulate him at the plate. Castilla hit over 40 home runs in three straight seasons in the early years of Coors Field, and he was always welcomed back into the fold when he rejoined the Rockies in 2004 and 2006. I saw him pinch hit in 2006 against the Nationals (for which I had some awesome seats behind the Nats' dugout) in one of his last games in Denver.

2002 Upper Deck #720 Larry Walker

Here's more post-Run action at the plate, as Larry Walker calmly fist-bumps his teammate. Looks like that's a Cardinal in the visitor's dugout, which gives me a clue. The Rockies hosted the Cards six times in 2001, but the only game in which Larry Walker hit a home run against them was on Opening Day, April 2nd, 2001. It's as good a guess as any.

But now I'm second-guessing myself, since Walker doesn't have batting gloves on. More likely he nonchalantly trotted home from third on someone else's extra-base hit.

By the way, that's a fairly rare occurrence for the Rockies, to begin the season at home. more often than not, especially in recent seasons, they open up on the road and come back to Coors for a weekend series.

1993 Leaf #312 Alex Cole

There were lots of 1993 Leaf cards in here, including one of Night Owl's favorite non-Dodgers, Alex Cole. He spent the 1993 season as a Rockie before moving back to the American League. He was more of a contact hitter than a power hitter, having hit only seven home runs in his career, none of which came in a Rockies uniform. He was well-known for his goggles, and chased down lots of long fly balls in Mile High Stadium.

1993 Leaf #312 Alex Cole (Reverse)

We get a shot of the Denver skyline on the back, one of my favorite features of 1993 Leaf, a set that appears here quite often. Though not as breathtaking as the snowy Rocky Mountains found on other 1993 cards, it's a nice photo of my home city (or at least my home Metro area). That is Republic Plaza on the right, the tallest building in Denver. It's among the tallest buildings in the entire Western USA, not counting the cities on the Pacific Coast.

The skyline in Denver has changed quite a bit in the last few years. Coors Field was still under construction when this was printed, and looking at an aerial photo from 1993's home opener (also a season they started on the road), you can see that Denver has grown significantly since then. So has satellite mapping technology, for that matter. McNichols Arena and the old Mile High are gone, but Coors Field, the Pepsi Center, an amusement park, an aquarium, an expanded transit hub, residential high rises, and lots more have gone up since 1993, with more under construction.

1996 Score #74 Vinny Castilla

I can't remember an action shot with more displaced infield dirt than this. Deion Sanders was a force of nature, and it was a good idea for Vinny Castilla to wear eye-shielding shades here. Score used the torn paper look in the upper left just a year after Topps did something similar for their own border in 1995. With photography like this, it's a shame Score didn't stick around longer. Perhaps it's the next brand that Panini will reinstate.

1996 Pinnacle #107 Walt Weiss

Walt Weiss sure had a lot of double play cards! Seems like everyone spent years trying to recreate his 1991 Topps rookie card. Here's another, with Jason Bates and an unidentified Cub making cameos.

In all these years of looking at 1996 Pinnacle, I never noticed the tiny silhouette of a batter in the center of the gold pyramid. And I didn't even need my magnifying glass to finally spot it. I pulled out my 1996 binder and confirmed that they all seem to have it, even the pitcher cards. It never ceases to amaze me the things I still manage to unearth after a lifetime of collecting.

2008 Topps Update #UH286 Aaron Cook AS

Like Shawn Chacon, Aaron Cook is one of just six pitchers to go to the All Star game in a Rockies uniform. Though the AL ended up winning in 2008, as they usually do, Cook pitched three solid innings of relief, giving up a few walks but no runs.

Since the early 1960s, the National and American leagues alternated the host city of the All-Star Game until 2007, when the Giants hosted a year after the Pirates. This was done to ensure the All-Star Game in 2008 would be held in Yankee Stadium, its final year of existence before being replaced. In that research, I learned that there were two All-Star Games each year between 1959 and 1962. My first thought is that they played one on each coast to accommodate the teams that had recently moved out West, so players wouldn't have to schlep out to the East Coast for a single exhibition game. But the real reason turns out to be pretty dumb.

And that alternating trend will be broken for the foreseeable future, as NL parks are scheduled to host through 2018, marking four consecutive years including last year in Cincinnati. I don't know if that's because the AL always seems to win and they want to level the playing field a bit, or just because the NL has been building more new stadiums lately.

Probably the latter.

2008 Topps Heritage #548 Glendon Rusch

There were a few retro cards in here, including this Topps Heritage card recreating the 1959 design. Rusch's photo here is very fuzzy, either taken out of focus, or more likely blown up from a low-res image. Maybe they did that deliberately to better make it look like a 1959 card. But I've seen better photography on cards. Even 1959 originals, like a Robin Roberts card I've had since I was a boy.

2015 Topps Rainbow Foil #680 Nick Hundley

Though he just got placed on the DL for a quick seven days, Nick Hundley has been the Rockies' starting catcher for most of the season so far, and after spending most of his career as a Padre, he surely knows his former NL West competitors well. Catchers are smart fellows. Maybe even smart enough to spot an obvious Photoshop job like this. Topps has kept up the rainbow foil parallels for a couple years, and I've ended up with most of the 2015 Rockies via trades and card shops by now.

1995 Upper Deck Minors #101 Neifi Perez SH

This last one made me do a double-take. I was completely certain that Neifi Perez never turned an unassisted triple play. Tulowitzki has, but not Neifi. Then I took a closer look and saw his California League All-Star Game jersey, and realized it must have been in the minors! I had never known that. This event did not occur in the Minor League All-Star Game as pictured, but it's an interesting bit of trivia regardless.

From some Minor League trivia to a tiny detail in a sea of gold foil, my first trade package from #SuperTrader Night Owl expanded my knowledge quite a bit.